Event names that survive a reorg
growth_onboarding_v3_complete is a fossil the moment Growth is folded into Lifecycle. The event still fires. Nobody new knows whether v3 was the experiment or the rollout. The warehouse keeps the name like a loyal dog.
Name the behaviour the user performed, in the present tense, without the squad: onboarding_completed. Put the experiment id in a property. Put the owner in the dictionary, not in the string that will outlive the owner’s job title.
A rule we keep repeating
If a name requires a story about last year’s org chart, it is already wrong. Properties are cheap to add and easy to deprecate. Event names are tattoos.
We keep a graveyard in the Signal Atlas so retired names stay visible. Reusing checkout_start for a new meaning is how two finance reports diverge in silence.
This is not poetry. It is the least romantic part of App Analytics, and the part that saves the next hire three months.