North Start Metric & Key Performing Indicator. This step is more important than you think. Before you think about features and design, decide what is your NSM first. You shouldn't have too many NSM, 1 or 2 NSM is fine. Once your NSM is defined , it will give you direction to move and will make decision making easier. Set as many KPIs as you can right now and you may also iterate the list later stage as well.
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Example
Product: An app for aspiring writers which makes them write more consistently
NSM: Number of posts created per user
KPIs: Number of comments and likes on the post, Number of users following each other, time being spent on the app, time being spent on reading per post, etc
How this helps? : As my NSM is just number of posts created per user. All of my focus will be to think and design the product which make users just write more and more. Every single solution and features should be leading to the NSM and if it is not, then you know it's not important and you probably should remove it.
My KPIs tell me that, more comments and likes is received by the post, authors are more likely to create more post, etc
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