导言
Tia was feeling burned out.
蒂亚感到筋疲力尽。
For four years, she had been a product designer and product manager at a publicly traded, thousand employee, business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) company. She did everything a product person should do: She researched her market, advocated for the humans using the product, emphasized outcomes over outputs, and made the case, over and over, for more focus and fewer distractions.
四年来，她一直是一家上市公司的产品设计师和产品经理，该公司拥有上千名员工，做着 B2B 的 SaaS 业务。 她做了所有产品人员应该做的事情: 她研究了自己的市场，为人们使用产品呼号，强调结果而不是产出，并一遍又一遍地为了更多的关注和更少的干扰努力。
Co-workers—managers, teammates, executives—would nod in agreement. They all concurred: Tia’s product-led approach made sense.
同事——经理、队友、高管——都会点头表示同意。 他们都同意: Tia 以产品为导向的方法是有道理的。
But still, the company struggled to put all these great concepts into action.
但是，该公司仍然在所有这些伟大的理念付诸行动过程中举步维艰。
Her company seemed caught in a perpetual cycle of shiny objects, success theater, false starts, and vague pivots-by-PowerPoint. Just when they hit their stride, something would change. It felt like they were always talking past each other.
她的公司似乎陷入了一个永恒的循环: 闪亮的目标、成功的戏剧、错误的开始和一个个模糊的演示文稿。 正当他们大踏步前进的时候，总会有一些现实情况发生变化。 感觉就像他们总是一次次的陷入同一个模式中。
Tia’s co-workers were experienced and creative, but that almost made things worse. 「It wasn’t for a lack of good ideas or experience,」 Tia said. 「Everyone I worked with was smart and persuasive, and they brought data to discussions of strategy and priorities. But a week or two later we were back to business as usual.」
蒂亚的同事经验丰富，富有创造力，但这几乎让事情变得更糟。 「这并不是因为缺乏好的想法或经验」，蒂亚说。 「与我共事的每个人都很聪明，也很有说服力，他们为战略和优先事项的讨论提供了数据。 但一两周后，我们又恢复了老样子。」
We met Tia at an Amplitude North Star workshop in New York City. Amplitude makes product analytics software used by thousands of product, growth, and marketing teams, and we’re fortunate to interact with lots of passionate and skilled product people. Over the years, we’ve run lots of workshops on product topics. One of our favorite workshop topics is the North Star Framework.
我们是在纽约市的一个 Amplitude 北极星工作坊上认识蒂亚的。 Amplitude 使产品分析软件用于成千上万的产品，增长，和营销团队，我们很幸运地与许多热情和熟练的产品人员互动。 多年来，我们举办了很多关于产品主题的工作坊。 我们最喜欢的工作坊主题之一是北极星框架。
A team using the North Star Framework identifies a single, meaningful metric and a handful of contributing Inputs. Product teams work to influence those Inputs, which in turn drive the metric. The North Star is a leading indicator of sustainable growth and acts as a connective tissue between the product and the broader business.
一个使用北极星框架的团队确定了一个单一的、有意义的指标和少量的围绕北极星指标的贡献性的输入指标。 产品团队致力于影响那些输入，这反过来又推动了度量指标的迭代。 北极星是可持续增长的引领性指标，是产品和更广泛业务之间的结缔组织。
The idea of managing by a North Star is not new. Many methodologies promote focus with a small set of related metrics and a compelling 「True North.」 In the early 2010s, Sean Ellis and the growth hacking movement helped popularize the structure of the North Star that inspired this book. We use the framework ourselves in product development at Amplitude.
由北极星来引领管理的想法并不新鲜。 许多方法论都推崇通过关注一个引人注目的「真北极星」和一小撮与之相关的指标，来促进工作的专注性。在21世纪10年代早期，肖恩 · 埃利斯和成长黑客运动帮助普及了「北极星架构」，也就是本书的源头。 我们在 Amplitude 公司的产品开发中也使用了这个框架。
The North Star workshop helped Tia break through the frustrations she’d been experiencing. As she learned more about the framework, Tia realized that her team had been speaking three languages: the language of the customer (needs, goals, experiences, delight); the language of the product (features, workflows, releases); and the language of the business (vision, differentiation, revenue, growth).
北极星工作坊帮助蒂亚克服了她一直经历的挫折。 随着对框架了解的越来越多，Tia 意识到她的团队一直在讲三种语言: 客户的语言(需求、目标、体验、快乐) ; 产品的语言(特性、工作流、发布) ; 以及业务的语言(愿景、差异化、收入、增长)。
「There was nothing to really tie those things together,」 she observed. 「And I think this is why we were going in circles. That seems to be the key benefit of North Star: connecting those different perspectives.」
「没有什么东西能真正把这些东西联系在一起，」她说。 「我认为这就是我们在兜圈子的原因。 这似乎是北极星的主要好处: 将不同的视角连接起来。」
In this book, we will teach you about the North Star Framework, describe how to run a North Star workshop at your company, and help your team converge on a North Star Metric and supporting Inputs. We also cover how to make it stick, when to adapt, and how to integrate the North Star into your day-to-day product development approach.
在这本书中，我们将教你北极星框架，描述如何在你的公司运行北极星工作坊，并帮助你的团队找到北极星指标度量体系和相关的支持性输入。 我们还介绍了如何使它持久，什么时候做调整，以及如何将北极星集成到你的日常产品开发方法论中。
As for Tia, she’s still using the skills and tools she learned at that North Star workshop in New York City. Her career has progressed, and she’s now introduced the framework at a new company, where she’s successfully adapted the framework to a new product, team, and development process. She’s having better conversations, working with more alignment, and making more impact.
至于 Tia，她仍然在使用她在纽约北极星工作坊学到的技能和工具。 她的职业生涯有了进步，现在她在一家新公司引入了这个框架，在那里她成功地将这个框架调整到一个新的产品、团队和开发过程中。 她有了更好的沟通，一致性更高的工作，并产生了更大的影响。
That’s what we want for you.
这就是我们想要的。