In product development, teams often drown in data, tracking things like daily active users, page views, and sign-ups.
These numbers seem important but don’t always show the product’s real status.
These basic KPIs are similar to only looking at a car’s speedometer; they tell you how fast you’re going but not where you’re headed. Top product teams know they need one clear metric to cut through the confusion and unite everyone toward a meaningful goal.
That’s where a senior product manager who can define and put a North Star Metric into practice is important.
Demilade Olufayo brings this skill to a team, empowering them to move from simply tracking activity to measuring real value. This provides the clarity needed for lasting growth. His guidance makes sure every product choice, from small feature changes to big roadmap shifts, supports the company’s main vision.
A North Star Metric (NSM) is the key measurement of the value a product provides to its customers. For social media, it might be monthly active friends. For a marketplace, it could be the number of successful transactions. Demilade commences by collaborating with his colleagues to find the single metric that, when improved, guarantees value for both the user and the business. Creating this NSM requires a deep understanding of the product’s value and the customer’s experience.
Once the NSM is set, Demilade implements it by finding the key metrics that contribute to the North Star. For a content platform, the NSM of minutes of content watched might depend on things like number of creators, number of new videos uploaded, and view-to-completion rate. By linking team actions to the main goal, he turns the product roadmap into a plan for moving the North Star.
Demilade understands that an NSM can be risky on its own. If a team only aims to increase one metric, their effort could result in adverse outcomes. To avoid this, he balances the North Star with guardrail metrics. These measurements make sure that working toward the NSM doesn’t hurt the product’s quality or long-term health. For a ridesharing service, an NSM of trips completed might be balanced with guardrails like driver satisfaction rate and customer wait time, ensuring that growth doesn’t hurt quality.
Creating a good NSM isn’t a one-time thing; it needs to change over time. As a product grows and the market changes, its core value might shift. Demilade constantly checks if the current North Star still shows the product’s purpose. He teaches his teams to embrace change, understanding when to adopt a new NSM that better fits the company’s current strategic aims. This flexibility is important for staying relevant.
Demilade’s leadership offers the strategic focus that sets top product teams apart. He turns a company’s big ideas into a measurable strategy, empowering his teams to reach decisions that lead to strategic results. By connecting the product roadmap to a single, uniting goal, he guarantees every action is both productive and meaningful, pushing the product and the business forward.