An introduction to OKRs

Some quick notes on OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Much of this is taken from these (better!) sources, so I’d recommend checking these out first:

• What is an OKR? Here are the basics 
• John Doerr on OKRs (youtube.com)
• The OKR Origin Story
• Engineering OKR examples

 

Objectives

Objectives are goals for your organization. Their purpose is to inspire the team and answer the “Why?”. Why are we doing this work? 
Objectives should
• Be qualitative (based on quality or characteristics rather than on quantity or measured values)
• Focus on the change the team wants to see if it is successful
• Be aspirational & push the team to stretch

Example Objectives

Company-wide objective:

• Become the single source of truth for COVID-19 information, facts and updates for the world’s media outlets by the end of 2020.

Departmental objective:

• Ensure the accuracy, usability and value of the data we serve to humans and machines alike by end of Q2 2021.
  
  

Product team objective:

• Ensure our partners can access our data regardless of where they are in the world by Q3 2021.

Engineering team objective”

• Protect the integrity of the data our teams use in our products and services by bringing the power of AI and Machine Learning to bear on our security infrastructure by Q1 2021.

Notes

• Make sure to answer the Why, rather than detailing out the details (systems, projects or initiatives) the team will be working on. Instead of Deploy X by end of year, so why we need to deploy X and what benefit it will provide to customers.
• Include the time box. It shouldn’t take forever, otherwise how will we know we should review, close or cut. Deadlines force focus even if somewhat arbitrary.

 

Key results

Key results answer the question “How will we know we’ve achieved the objective?”
Use numbers & metrics of customer behaviour to quantify success.

Key results are always metrics, always measure customer/user behaviour and should, in most cases, be ratios or rates rather than absolute numbers.

Examples

• Objective:
  • Ensure our partners can access our data regardless of where they are in the world by Q3 2021.
• Key Result:
  • 15% increase in successful log-ins from mobile devices

 

• Objective:
  • Protect the integrity of the data our teams by bringing the power of AI to bear on our security infrastructure by Q1 2021.
• Key Result:
  • Reduce the number of manual security processes for the infosec team by 50%.
    
    

Notes

An Anti-patterns is putting features (or output) as a key result. E.g. “we deployed the new mobile app”.

Tags: objectives, okr