Artifact: North-Star and Input Metrics — Kestrel

Kestrel's north-star metric, its input metrics, and how it differs from an OMTM -- exercises co-17, co-20. Kestrel is a fictional product; every quoted number, question, or finding here is an illustrative, constructed example, not real data or a real transcript.

North-star metric: number of teams with a published schedule active in the last 7 days. This measures delivered value directly -- a team only shows up in this number if they're actually running their real-world scheduling through Kestrel, not merely signed up for it.

Input metrics (levers the team directly controls):

1. Activation rate -- % of new signups that publish a first complete schedule within 3 days.
2. Weekly schedule-publish rate per active team -- does an activated team keep coming back week over week?
3. Shift-swap completion rate -- % of initiated swap requests that reach a final approve/deny, rather than stalling unresolved.

Why this differs from an OMTM: the north-star is durable -- it doesn't rotate as the team's current focus changes, and it stays the company's single measure of delivered value for as long as Kestrel exists in its current form. An OMTM is deliberately stage-specific and temporary -- this quarter's OMTM, while the team is focused on the onboarding redesign, is specifically the 3-day activation rate; next quarter, once activation is healthy, the OMTM will rotate to a different input metric while the north-star itself stays the same.