OKRs: Get your team to focus on things that really matter!
Objectives and key results is a goal setting framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to define measurable goals and track their outcomes.
I was first introduced to OKRs in 2018 and I was not super impressed to begin with. They seemed more suited to sales and marketing and definitely seemed a lot of work. But over the past year and a half, OKRs have become our engineering team’s go to goal setting framework. It’s a very simple and effective framework and it helps us in cutting out the noise and focusing on things that really matter.
Anatomy of OKRs:
Objective: An Objective is simply what is to be achieved, no more and no less. By definition, objectives are significant, concrete, action-oriented, and (ideally) inspirational. When properly designed and deployed, they’re a vaccine against fuzzy thinking — and fuzzy execution¹.
Key Results: Key Results benchmark and monitor how we get to the objective. Effective KRs are specific and time-bound, aggressive yet realistic. Most of all, they are measurable and verifiable. You either meet a key result’s requirements or you don’t; there is no gray area, no room for doubt¹
Example:
Objective: Release great software
Key Results:
- No hot-fixes
- Release every week without exceptions
- Maintain 99.9 crash free sessions on mobile apps
Here the big goal is to release great software and the benchmark for this to ensure the releases are timely (every week) and of high quality (No hot fixes needed and crash free sessions above 99.9). The Key results are clearly measurable and verifiable at the end of the designated period.
Things to watch out for
- Key results must be measurable and identifiable. Setting KRs which can’t be measured and verified defeats the purpose of OKRs.
- Don’t add too many or too few OKRs. A 3 * 3 (3 Objectives with 3 Key Results each) matrix usually works well.
- The team OKRs should have a buy-in and contributions from the team! Creating Objectives that the team can’t relate to or can’t commit to is a recipe for disaster.
References:
[1]: https://www.whatmatters.com/faqs/okr-meaning-definition-example/
