You cannot improve what you cannot measure. But measuring the wrong thing is worse than measuring nothing — it optimizes you toward the wrong outcome. Today you learn to pick the right metrics and set OKRs that create alignment instead of gaming.
By the end of this lesson you will identify a North Star metric for a given product, distinguish leading from lagging indicators, write one OKR with three well-scoped key results, and design an instrumentation plan to track a funnel.
North Star metric is the foundation of Day 3. Every concept that follows builds on the mental model you establish here. The most effective approach is to understand the principle first, then apply it — skipping straight to implementation creates gaps that compound into confusion later.
Work through each example in this lesson sequentially. The concepts connect, and the order is deliberate. If something is unclear, slow down at that point rather than pushing past it — a ten-minute pause now saves hours of debugging later.
Understanding North Star metric requires seeing it in motion. The code below is not a complete application — it is a minimal, working illustration of the key mechanism. Study the pattern, run it, break it deliberately, then fix it. That cycle builds real comprehension.
Once the basic pattern works, the logical next step is OKRs. This is where the abstraction becomes useful — you move from understanding the mechanism to applying it to real problems. The transition is usually smaller than it feels. Most of the hard work happened in Section 1.
leading vs lagging indicators completes today's picture. It is where North Star metric and OKRs converge into a pattern you can apply to novel problems. This integration step is often where the day's learning consolidates — if the earlier sections felt abstract, this one typically makes them click.
Implementing North Star metric alone handles the happy path. Real systems encounter edge cases, invalid input, and unexpected state. Missing OKRs means missing those guards.
Combining North Star metric with OKRs gives you a complete, defensible implementation. The extra lines cost ten minutes; the robustness they add is worth hours of debugging time.
Several mistakes appear consistently when engineers encounter Metrics & OKRs for the first time. Recognizing them now costs nothing; encountering them in production costs hours.
Two intensive days (Thu–Fri) with an instructor who has taught thousands of engineers. Cohorts in 5 cities, June–June–October 2026 (Thu–Fri).
Reserve Your Seat — $1,490Before moving on, you should be able to answer these without looking: