Connection Between OKRs, Product Roadmap, and PMT KPIs

OKR, mission, vision, KPIs, etc. these are cool words but connecting them properly is achieved rarely. So what is the heck and how we can combine them in a useful way?

There are many ways how you can build your product, roadmap, and vision. I will try to explain the way how you can structure it.

Let's begin with the basics.

What is OKR?

Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is one of the most popular management strategies/frameworks for goal setting within organizations.

The purpose of OKRs is to connect company, team, and personal goals to measurable results while having all team members and leaders work together in one, unified direction.

A short history about OKRs…
The development of OKRs is generally attributed to Andy Grove the “Father of OKRs”, who introduced the approach to Intel during his tenure there and documented this in his 1983 book High Output Management. Grove’s simple but effective concept is explained by John Doerr: “The key result has to be measurable. But at the end, you can look, and without any arguments: Did I do that or did I not do it? Yes? No? Simple. No judgments in it.

As I said it is popular,

Larry Page, the CEO of Alphabet and co-founder of Google, credited OKRs within the foreword to Doerr’s book: “OKRs have helped lead us to 10× growth, many times over. They’ve helped make our crazily bold mission of ‘organizing the world’s information’ perhaps even achievable. They’ve kept me and the rest of the company on time and track when it mattered the most.”

Since becoming popular at Google, OKRs have found favor with several other similar tech start-up organizations including LinkedIn, Twitter, Gett, Insider, and Uber.

OKRs comprise;

• an objective — a clearly defined goal
• and 3–5 key results — specific measures used to track the achievement of that goal.

The goal of OKR is to define how to achieve objectives through concrete, specific and measurable actions. Key results can be measured on a 0–100% scale or any numerical unit (e.g. dollar amount, %, items, etc.).

Objectives should also be supported by initiatives, which are the plans and activities that help to achieve the objective and move forward the key results. It is recommended that your target success rate for key results be 60%. A 60% success rate encourages competitive goal making that is meant to stretch workers at low risk. If 100% of the key results are consistently being met, key results should be reevaluated.

Well, let’s go one step deeper to understand the projection of OKRs on roadmaps.

So, What is a Product Roadmap?

A product roadmap is a high-level visual summary that maps out the vision (Product Vision Board) and direction of your product offering over time. A product roadmap communicates the why and what behind what you’re building. A roadmap is a guiding strategic document as well as a plan for executing the product strategy.

You can find a detailed explanation about Product Roadmapping — here.

A product roadmap is essential to communicating how short-term efforts match long-term business goals. Understanding the role of a roadmap — and how to create a great one — is key for keeping everyone on your team headed in the same direction. Roadmap keeps people focused on the direction that OKRs set.

We have OKR, we have a roadmap. But is it enough? maybe, maybe not. Let’s see how KPIs can fill it…

What is KPI?

A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels to evaluate and communicate their success at reaching targets. High-level KPIs may focus on the overall performance of the business, while low-level KPIs may focus on processes in departments such as sales, marketing, HR, support, and at the lowest level is team member KPI.

Communication, going the same direction, having measurable goals are the main intersection cluster of OKRs, Roadmaps as well as KPIs.

Step by Step OKR to KPI and Inputs to Your Product Vision

First of all, the company must have the Company Vision. This is the start point for the creation of Objectives that serve the Company's Vision.

• Vision — Big picture of what you want to achieve.
• Mission — General statement of how you will achieve the vision.

Examples of business Vision and Mission are:

The vision of an Example Business — A successful, world-class online growth marketing business.

The mission of an Example Business — To provide unique and high quality in one growth marketing tool to worldwide customers.

Then you need to have Objectives under those Vision that serves and contributes to it perfectly.

An objective turns a goal’s general statement of what is to be accomplished into a specific, quantifiable, time-sensitive statement of what is going to be achieved and when it will be achieved.

Examples of business objectives are:

• Earn at least a 20 percent after-tax rate of return on our investment during the next year.
• Increase market share by 10 percent over the next year.
• Lower operating costs by 15 percent over the next year through improvement in the efficiency of the manufacturing process.
• Reduce the call-back time of customer inquiries and questions to no more than four hours.

You need to make sure that, your objectives meet the followings;

• Measurable: What specifically will be achieved and when will it be achieved?
• Suitable: Does it fit as a measurement for achieving the goal?
• Feasible: Is it possible to achieve?
• Commitment: Are people committed to achieving the objective?
• Ownership: Are the people responsible for achieving the objective included in the objective-setting process?

Keep your objectives clear and precise and preferably no more than 5.

Then, need to be set key results which contributes to those objectives.

If to give an example of an Objective with a Key result, then it would look like this one;

I will (Objective) as measured by (this set of Key Results).

so, Key Results are a set of metrics that measure your progress towards the Objective. For each Objective, you should preferably have a set of 2 to 5 Key Results. (More than that and no one will remember or execute them.)

For example;

Objective:
Create an Awesome Customer Experience, and increase CE Score by 20%

Key Results:

• Improve Net Promoter Score from X to Y.
• Increase Repurchase Rate from X to Y.
• Maintain Customer Acquisition cost under Y.

So, I will Create an Awesome Customer Experience, and increase CE Score by 20% by Improving the Net Promoter Score from X to Y.

and those Key Results would influence the department goals (for example Product Management Department).

In this way, we are coming from the Vision and Mission to the Department Goals which later reflect on even the personal goals of the team members as KPIs.

But before that!

Those objective and key results formulate or give a great contribution for the items which will be in the Product Roadmaps.

Your Roadmap items/ideas which give innovation, optimization, scaling, product feature gap, customer happiness, etc. will be easier to prioritize.

In this way, you will have a very solid think-through ideation and justification for them…

We offer to do this initiative/solution because this serves this Objective via that KR.

As those structures are on the roadmap for the product, it affects the team members' KPIs as well.

Your next step is to reflect the company objectives to the product management team KPIs via department KRs.

For example;

Company Vision/Mission:
Building World Class Customer Experience, and increasing CE Score by 20%

Product Management Department Objective:
Building Strong CE Score

Product Management Development KR:
CE Score Increasing it via low hanging UX improvement by 30%

Roadmap Item:
300 Efforts will be burnt on UX Improvements
Or
Roadmap KR:
Increasing UMUX score by 10%

Product Manager KPI:
Auditing X components with UX experts to define UX improvement areas, and prioritizing in development will create an impact on UX Improvements by at least 30%.

As you see in this example, from bottom to top, top to the bottom, everybody serves this same goal within an active communication.

The product manager knows exactly what the company wants to achieve, as well as the CEO, who knows what all departments are doing for the company’s mission to be met.

Remember the vectors!
OKRs make a maximum influence on a and b to get them in the same direction via company-wise communication.

We have a company vision, mission, strategy, OKRs, an intelligent Roadmap, and very well-organized team member KPIs. Even though, we still did not cover everything!

What about the ad hoc decisions? What is the better way to move on each layer in the organization?

Setting up a mentality in the community, aligning all, and making all commit to prioritization by weighing the value of additional information against the cost of not deciding.

Because some things can not wait until you change your vision, OKRs, Roadmaps. etc. Some decisions need immediate actions that are also serving the main goal which was initially chosen.

• Separate your “must-dos” from your “like-to-dos” and don’t mistakenly slip any “like-to-dos” onto the first list.
• Chances are you won’t have time to deal with unimportant things, which is better than not having time to deal with the important things.
• Don’t mistake possibilities for probabilities.

Make sure the decisions in the company services in this direction.
Company Interests > Department Interests > Personal Interest.

Once the top vision and OKRs are set correctly and communicated well with the community, it's much easier to prioritize and sort everything.

I would love to finish with a few quotes.

Steve Job says:
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

John E. Doerr says:
Then come the four OKR
superpowers”: focus
align, track, and stretch.