North Star Metric Template

Value moment, north star definition, checklist and rejected candidates, input metric tree with decomposition, guardrails, review cadence, change log

Produkt & ProjektStandardCommon practice (North Star Framework, Amplitude North Star Playbook)north star metricAktualisiert 29.10.2026

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Anleitung: Use it when a product team needs one metric for customer value and the inputs that drive it. Fill the value moment and the definition first, then the input tree and guardrails. The main pitfall is choosing revenue or a vanity metric as the north star.

Vorschau

North Star Metric: [Product name]

A north star metric definition: the single metric that best captures the value customers get from the product, the tree of input metrics that drive it, the guardrail metrics that must not get worse, and how the metric is calculated, reviewed and changed. There is no formal standard; the template follows common product practice (the North Star Framework popularised by Amplitude's North Star Playbook) in original words. Define each metric precisely in a data/metric-definition document and link it here. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

Document control

Field	Value
Document ID	[NSM-PRODUCT-NN]
Product	[Product name] Example: Tallow Notes
Version	[0.1]
Status	[Draft / Approved / Under review / Retired]
Owner	[@head-of-product]
Data owner	[@analytics-lead]
Approvers / reviewers	[@leadership, @engineering-lead]
Linked strategy	[product/product-vision-strategy document ID]
Last updated	YYYY-MM-DD

Revision history

Version	Date	Author	Change
0.1	YYYY-MM-DD	[@owner]	First definition
[1.0]	YYYY-MM-DD	[@owner]	[Approved, baseline recorded]

1. Value the product delivers

Core value moment: [When does a customer get the value they came for?]

Example: A Tallow Notes team gets value when knowledge written by one member is used or extended by another, so the team stops relying on one person's memory.

2. North star metric definition

Field	Value
Name	[Metric name]
Plain-language definition	[What is counted and when it qualifies]
Unit	[Accounts, workspaces, users, transactions]
Time window	[Day / week / month, calendar or rolling]
Data source and owner	[Table or event, @owner]
Metric definition document	[Link to data/metric-definition]
Baseline	[Value, date]
Target	[Value, date]
Example: Name	Weekly collaborating workspaces (WCW)
Example: Definition	Workspaces in which at least two different members each edited at least one shared note during the calendar week (Monday to Sunday, UTC)
Example: Unit	Workspace
Example: Source	Event `note_edited` with workspace and member IDs, excluding internal and test workspaces
Example: Baseline	4,200 in the week to 2026-09-27
Example: Target	6,000 by 2027-12-31

3. Checklist for a good north star

Question	Answer for the chosen metric
Does it reflect value received by customers, not only value captured by the company?	[Yes / No, why]
Is it a leading indicator of revenue and retention?	[Evidence]
Can product teams influence it within a quarter through input metrics?	[Yes / No]
Is it understandable by everyone in the company in one sentence?	[Yes / No]
Is it hard to game without delivering value?	[How it could be gamed and the guardrail]
Can it be measured reliably and quickly (weekly)?	[Yes / No]

Candidate	Why rejected (Example)
Monthly active users	Counts single users who never collaborate, so it rewards the personal-notebook use the strategy moves away from
Notes created per week	Easy to inflate with empty or duplicate notes; does not show value to a team
Monthly recurring revenue	Lags value by months and teams cannot move it directly

4. Metric tree: input metrics

Input ID	Input metric	How it drives the north star	Owner team	Current (Example)	Target (Example)
I1	[Metric]	[Mechanism]	[Team]	[Value]	[Value]
I1 (Example)	Newly activated workspaces per week	Adds workspaces to WCW for the first time	Growth	480	650
I2 (Example)	Week-over-week WCW retention	Keeps last week's collaborating workspaces	Core	88%	90%
I3 (Example)	Shared notes edited per collaborating workspace per week	Deeper use predicts retention (diagnostic for I2)	Core	6.4	7.5
I4 (Example)	Resurrected workspaces per week (collaborating again after at least one inactive week)	Returns lapsed workspaces	Lifecycle	68	90

Worked decomposition (Example), week to 2026-09-27: the previous week had 4,150 collaborating workspaces. At 88% retention, 3,652 of them were retained (4,150 x 0.88 = 3,652). Adding 480 newly activated and 68 resurrected workspaces gives 3,652 + 480 + 68 = 4,200, which matches the north star value in section 2. When the north star moves, check which of the three components changed before celebrating or reacting.

5. Guardrail metrics

ID	Guardrail	Limit	Why it matters	Action if breached
G1	[Metric]	[Threshold]	[Risk]	[Response]
G1 (Example)	Sync failures per 1,000 edits	Not above 0.5 (current 0.4)	Collaboration value collapses if edits are lost	Freeze feature releases touching sync until back under limit
G2 (Example)	Invitation emails marked as spam per 1,000 sent	Not above 1.0	Pushing invitations can harm trust and deliverability	Pause invitation experiments
G3 (Example)	Support tickets per 1,000 weekly active members	Not above 12	Growth must not come from confusing flows	Review the change that moved it
G4 (Example)	Share of members who turn off notifications in week 1	Not above 15%	Engagement pushed by notifications is not value	Review notification changes

6. Targets and review cadence

Review	Frequency	Participants	Output
Metric review	[Weekly]	[Product and analytics leads]	[Notes on movement by input]
Strategy check	[Quarterly]	[Leadership]	[Targets confirmed or changed]
Definition review	[Yearly]	[Head of product, analytics lead]	[Definition kept or changed, with reason]

Definition change log:

Date	Change	Reason	Effect on history
YYYY-MM-DD	[Change]	[Reason]	[Back-filled / series break noted]

7. Common pitfalls

Choosing a vanity metric (sign-ups, page views) that grows without value delivered.
Choosing revenue or profit, which teams cannot move directly and which lags value.
Having several north stars, which means none of them guides trade-offs.
Setting input metrics that do not add up to the north star, so movement cannot be explained.
Ignoring guardrails until customers complain.
Treating correlation in the data as proof that an input causes the north star; test it with experiments (product/ab-test-plan).

Related templates and references

data/metric-definition for the precise definition of each metric
data/dashboard-specification for the north star dashboard
product/product-vision-strategy, business/okr, business/kpi-scorecard, product/ab-test-plan
Amplitude, North Star Playbook (John Cutler and co-authors), available from Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/books/north-star

Standard and licence note

Based on common product analytics practice. The North Star Framework is described in Amplitude's North Star Playbook, which is cited by name only; no text, checklist wording or figures are copied, and all wording here and the Tallow Notes example are original. Template licence: MIT.