The Open Source Product Manager
A Product Managers Guide to the North Star Metric
The benefits and pitfalls of using a North Star to shape your product direction and roadmap — and how to navigate them.
What is a North Star Metric?
The North Star Metric is the one metric which best captures the core value your product delivers for your customers and users. It is invaluable in helping product teams remain focused on delivering long-term value in the face of a constant flow of new ideas, feature requests, cool technology and other shiny baubles. Done well, the North Star should shape decision making at every level and ensure every team in the organisation is aligned around a common outcome.
What makes a good North Star Metric?
A good North Star Metric reflects the value exchange within a product. It should capture the value that is being created for customers or users. However, this value exchange is generally nuanced — and often unique to the company — and therefore so is the metric. Consider the following examples:
