20 July 2026 · Wei Liang Tan
What to leave out of the first tracking plan
A first dictionary that tries to describe every future feature will be rewritten before the first release.
Teams about to launch often ask for “everything we might need.” That list includes events for a loyalty programme that is a slide, a referral loop that has no legal copy, and a chatbot that the vendor has not scoped.
The first plan should cover the paths a person can take in the current build and the next named release. Curiosity events — every filter chip, every tooltip — wait. They are cheap to add later and expensive to retire if they were named in a hurry.
Marketing UTMs are not product events. If the app reads a campaign parameter, store it on the user or the session once. Repeating it on every tap duplicates a field that already has an owner in the ads account.
Internal-only screens (ops tools, staff PINs) rarely belong in the same dictionary as the customer path. Mixing them trains the next analyst to ignore half the export.
Leave room in the document for a parking lot. Ideas go there with a date. They do not get event names until a screen exists. Schema Pulse Point will refuse to invent names for vapour. That refusal is part of the fee.