Northstar

Overview

Finding value for your customers.

North star metrics are one of the most critical elements of a data-driven organization.

• A north star metric is the one metric that captures the core value that your product delivers to customers.

• It should be specific to your business and easy to understand and measure.

• In addition, it lets you know if you are moving towards success or away from it.

Simply put, a north star metric is an essential tool for navigating your business.

• It’s a number that allows you to measure how successful or unsuccessful you are in achieving your goals.

If you have no clear way to measure success, you don’t have anything to aim for. It’s like trying to win a game without knowing the score. That’d be pretty demoralizing, wouldn’t it?

Northstar metric has one purpose: to keep you focused on what’s important.

Why is this so important? The north star metric is crucial because it gives your team something to rally around and a clear direction to focus on in their work. Everyone on the team should understand the north star metric and how they’re contributing to it.

Your north star metric is like your compass. It will guide you towards a destination and keep you focused on what matters most.

Framework

1. Classify the business model and metrics.

   1. Understand and classify the business model of the organization.

   2. Find the relevant north star metric for your business.

1. Tie what you own to the company's mission statement and the north star.

   1. Determine how the success of your product/feature will enable the company's mission and the organizational north star metrics.

2. Identify Intermediate Metrics.

   1. It cannot be easy to impact the North Star metric directly. You’ll have to identify intermediate metrics that can be defined at the product/feature level, eventually moving the North Star metric in the right direction.

3. Prioritize and Set a Goal.

   1. Identify 1-2 metrics from my intermediate metrics and also set a goal for the prioritized metric.

North Star metrics can really help teams make progress towards their mission and deliver true value to their targeted customers.

References

Bonus content

Question 10:

Explanation:

The problem is very similar to binary search but with a slight modification.

• We iterate the array with start = 0 and end = len - 1 (where len is the length of the array).

• We start with checking for the base case if the middle element is the target.

• The twist comes here and because the array is sorted and rotated we need to compare the cases within the start-mid or mid-end range.

• Case 1: Check if the start and mid are in sorted order.

  • If so, check if the target is within that range. If so move the end pointer to the middle and start again with a new start and end.

  • If not, move the start pointer to the middle and start over.

• Case 2: If the start and mid are not in sorted order.

  • If the target is within the second half with mid and end ranges, then move the start pointer to the middle.

  • If not, move the end pointer to mid and start over.

Solution:

class Solution {
    public int search(int[] nums, int target) {
        int len = nums.length;
        int start = 0, end = len - 1;
        while (start <= end) {
            int mid = (start + end) / 2;
            if (nums[mid] == target) {
                return mid;
            } else if (nums[start] <= nums[mid]) {
                // If the target is within first half of the range
                if (target >= nums[start] && target <= nums[mid]) {
                    end = mid - 1;
                } else {
                    start = mid + 1;
                }
            } else {
                // If the target is within second half of the range
                if (target >= nums[mid] && target <= nums[end]) {
                    start = mid + 1;
                } else {
                    end = mid - 1;
                }
            }
        }
        return -1;
    }
}

Next problem:

In the next post, I will cover the below problem.