OKRs in an EBMgt perspective
When we are reading for product articles, OKRs comes back more than Evidence-Based Management (EBMgt). EBMgt can be a base to OKRs by framing the business in an agile perspective.
EBMgt and OKRs
EBMgt is a framework which permit to a business to set measurable goals:
- Business value is based on 4 Key Value Areas (KVA) : undiscovered value, current value, ability to innovate, time-to-market
- Goals are subdivided in Strategics, intermediates and intermediate tacticals
- Progress is seen as a measurable evolution of the business state
EBMgt is a practice developed in the knowledge base of the Scrum Product Owner (more detail here).
OKR is a goal-setting technique for organizations
- Objectives are subdivided in key results
- Objectives are expressed as endpoints and states, key results as measurable milestones
- Objectives should be first set at the organizational level (your bigger strategic goals) then eventually at the team level
OKR is a rising practice popularized among others by Google (more details)
As we can see, both practices are similar and advocate for a hierarchy of measurable targets. EBMgt additionally brings a base to choose those targets in a lean business perspective, OKRs an organization through the year. These practices can be joined to better frame the goal setting of an organization.
4 Key Value Areas for business
Before illustrating this, let’s detail the 4 Key Value Areas of the EBMgt framework:
- Undiscovered value: the potential future business value that could be realized if the organization met the needs of all potential customers
- Current value: the business value that the product delivers today
- Ability to innovate: the effectiveness of an organization to deliver new capabilities that might better meet customer needs
- Time-to-market: the organization’s ability to quickly deliver new business value (product / service or capabilities)
Example of OKRs set using the 4 KVAs:
Nearer the business value, your organizational objectives will probably concern more the undiscovered value (expressed as improvement of the current value).
KVA Undiscovered value
Objective: improve paying user / returning user to X
Key results
- improve the efficiency of incentives to pass to the paying version
- increase the price adequacy with the different paying options
- reduce the churn rate of the payment tunnel
The 2 lasting KVAs will permit your organization to be more efficient in delivering this new business value as frequently as possible.
KVA Innovation rate
Objective: improve innovation rate to 30%
Key results
- unship features with a use rate < 5%
- limit intermediate bugs to 100 per month
- limit refactoring time to 10%
KVA Ability to innovate
Objective: reduce release stabilization time to 0
Key results:
- setup a Continuous Integration platform
- automate tests for a 70% coverage
- automate deployment
EBMgt also offers measurement examples for these KVAs.
EBMgt and OKRs propose a similar hierarchy of business targets, branching the 4 KVAs of EBMgt at the top of OKRs can help your organization to better frame the setting-goal practice. EBMgt also gives a not exhaustive set of measurements adapted to a lean business perspective.
