The North Star Framework

The North Star Framework isn’t here to replace Scrum, Kanban or your issue tracking tool. Teams will continue to plan and deliver their day-to-day tasks in Jira, Linear, Trello or Notion.

What NSF adds is a strategic layer above your existing ways of working — the missing layer that connects strategy → goals → work across the whole organisation.

This layer helps you:

• translate strategy into measurable goals
• align product, engineering, sales, marketing and Customer Support
• focus on outcomes instead of output
• make priorities visible and shared
• reduce the need for status meetings
• understand why work is done, not just what is done

NSF also helps non-product teams take their first steps toward agile ways of working:

• shorter cycles instead of long plans
• clearer, shared goals
• continuous reflection
• better cross-team alignment

It’s an easy way for the entire company to move in the same direction — without forcing anyone to change tools or adopt heavy frameworks.

The North Star Framework fits organisations that want:

• clarity around strategy and priorities
• stronger alignment across departments
• a shared language for decision-making
• measurable outcomes, not endless output
• a repeatable planning rhythm
• transparency across the business

It works well for:

• Product & engineering organisations — NSF gives them a clear structure to connect strategy to epics, stories, tasks and experiments.
• Leadership teams — it provides a simple, shared way to communicate direction and track real progress.
• Cross-functional teams — NSF creates a common structure that reduces misunderstandings.
• Non-tech departments — NSF introduces lightweight agility without demanding new tools or processes.
• Startups, scale-ups, mid-size and established companies — NSF adapts to complexity regardless of company size.

NSF is especially valuable when strategy and execution feel disconnected.

NSF consists of five components that link long-term direction to this week’s work. Each block has a clear purpose and practical application.

Your North Star is the single metric that captures the core value your product delivers to customers.

It should be:

• customer-centric
• stable over time
• easy to understand
• a leading indicator of long-term success

Why it matters: It gives every team a shared direction and one metric that truly matters.

Example:

• Title: “Create successful job matches”
• Measured By: “Number of successful job matches per month”

Product Drivers are the key levers that move your North Star. They turn your North Star into understandable, actionable components.

They should be:

• measurable
• directly influenceable
• understandable across the company

Why it matters: Without Product Drivers, strategy stays abstract. With them, teams know exactly where to focus.

Example:

• Title: “Help our users reach value faster”
• Measured By: “Percentage of users publishing their first post within 24 hours”

Top Problems are the most important obstacles preventing your Product Drivers from improving. They are not ideas or features — they are the underlying issues you need to address.

Why it matters:

Teams often jump to solutions too quickly. Top Problems force you to understand the issue before deciding what to build.

Example:

“New users struggle to find relevant content within the first minute.”

Current Goals are what you commit to improving this cycle. They translate Top Problems into short-term, measurable outcomes.

Why it matters:

Goals give focus, alignment and clear expectations.

Example (outcome-based):

• Title: “Improve onboarding activation”
• Measured By: “Activation rate from 30% → 45% this cycle”

Example (milestone-based):

• Title: “Improve content discovery”
• Measured By:
  • “Ship personalised recommendations MVP”
  • “Run two experiments on search relevance”
  • “Validate with internal users”

The Work includes the tasks, experiments and improvements teams run to achieve their Current Goals. Each item should be small, iterative and atomic — the smallest meaningful slice of work that moves the goal forward.

Why it matters:

This is where strategy becomes execution. If work items are too large or too technical, teams lose focus and learning slows down. Clear, human-readable items ensure everyone understands what is being done and why.

• Each Work item should take a few hours up to a maximum of one week.
• When a Current Goal is milestone-based, the Work items can naturally be those milestones.
• Work items should be written in plain language, understandable across the organisation.

Example:

Current Goal:

“Make it possible to segment customers based on usage patterns.”

The Work (each corresponds to a Jira task):

• “Define the usage patterns we want to segment by”
• “Create the first version of segmentation logic”
• “Add basic filtering for segments in the internal dashboard”
• “Test segmentation with internal teams before rollout”

A simple, repeatable planning rhythm that connects all five blocks.

A typical 4–6 week cycle looks like this:

1. Review your North Star and Product Drivers
2. Identify your Top Problems
3. Set your Current Goals for this cycle
4. Plan The Work — slice the work into tasks, experiments or improvements
5. Run the cycle
6. Demo, reflect and reset

North Star examples:

• “Create successful job matches” → “Number of matches per month” - a job matching company
• “Help teams stay aligned” → “Weekly active teams using core features” - a collaboration titleColor
• “Offer the greatest movies and series to our users” → “Hours spent watching” - a streaming company

Product Driver examples:

• “Help users reach value faster” → “Time to first meaningful action” - a product that need improving onboarding
• “Improve content relevance” → “Clicks on recommended content” - a product struggling with users finding relevant content
• “Increase retention” → “14-day return rate” - a product with high churn rate

Top Problem examples:

• “Users cannot complete onboarding on mobile”
• “Search results do not match user intent”
• “Teams lack visibility into current goals”

Current Goal examples (milestone-based):

• “Increase team alignment”
  • “Run alignment workshop”
  • “Publish cross-team goal overview in NSF Board”
  • “Identify alignment gaps for next cycle”
• “Improve activation for new creators”
  • “Ship new onboarding message flow”
  • “A/B test first-post template”
  • “Analyse results and plan next iteration”

NSF Board is the simplest way to work with the North Star Framework — all in one place.