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Product Management vocabulary · Metrics & KPIs

North star metric

Meaning in product management, with examples

nounCommon term

In product management, north star metric means: The single metric that best captures the core value a product delivers to its customers and that the whole company uses to guide long-term growth.

In Turkish: kuzey yıldızı metriği, ana yön metriği

How it is used

Examples include weekly active listeners for a music app or orders delivered for a food app. Revenue is rarely chosen, because it is a result of value rather than a measure of it. Teams then break it down into smaller input metrics they can influence.

Example sentences

  1. Our north star metric is the number of invoices paid through the app each week.

  2. How does this project move the north star metric?

Common collocations

  • define a north star metric
  • move the north star metric
  • north star framework
  • input metrics
  • KPIShort for key performance indicator: one of the few numbers a team watches closely to judge whether a product or business is doing well.
  • metricA number that measures something about a product or its users, such as sign-ups per day, average session length or the share of users who return.
  • outcomeThe change in user behavior or business results that a team's work produces, such as fewer support calls or higher retention, rather than the work itself.
  • leading indicatorA metric that changes early and helps predict a future result, such as weekly logins predicting renewals, so a team can act before it is too late.
  • engagementHow often and how deeply users interact with a product, measured by things such as sessions per week, time spent or key actions taken.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Metrics & KPIs

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