How personal OKRs helped me to create MVP in three months . . . and what OKRs mean
There was no article in the last few months. But I have a reason for that. During this quarter, I decided to focus on another project. And the word “focus” is very crucial here because the project is named FocusOKR. But let’s go back to the beginning.
Objectives and Key Results
While working at 10Clouds, I became familiar with the concept of Objectives and Key Results. OKRs form a framework for defining and tracking objectives and their outcome. Created by Andy Grove and propagated by John Doerr, they have become the IT industry standard when talking about shaping the direction of a company and validating that we are heading in the right direction. Some famous companies and start-ups that use OKRs are Intel, Google, Uber, and Twitter.
Sometime later, a friend of mine, Ania, posted on Facebook that she uses OKRs in her personal life. I decided to try it myself. First, I started slow, with objectives related to my physical health (and key results: go running every week and do a set of exercises twice a week). I liked how OKRs helped me to focus on a limited number of objectives and to see how this commitment yielded results.
Objective
The biggest issue I had was how to track the progress of my objectives. Simple solutions like Notion and spreadsheets didn’t work me (too much effort to prepare them), and dedicated services were prepared for companies (not individuals), so managing personal objectives was complicated. I decided to give myself an objective for the third quarter: “Personal OKRs should be easy and accessible for everyone.” Three months is a very short time to create a web application (especially if you also work full-time) so I knew that I needed to pick only the most essential elements for this first minimum viable product.
Key Results
Each objective requires key results that will explain what kinds of actions must be performed to consider this objective fulfilled. Key results created for these objectives:
- Read 2 books, watch 2 videos about OKRs, and finish Vuejs course
- At the end of Q3 2019, first version of the site is running
- 100 people are waiting for that application
As you can see, all of these are measurable (for the second one I used a percentage scale of completion) and cover the full spectrum of the project — gathering domain and technical knowledge, software development, and marketing.
MVP
With an ambitious objective like this one, the scope of the project needed to be limited to essential elements. And please don’t think this is a bad thing. Thanks to that, FocusOKR is a simple and user-friendly tool that allows you to plan your objectives, note key results for them, and plan out what to do week by week. To keep themselves accountable, users can share their OKRs and receive weekly reminders about the importance of task planning. Noise is limited to a minimum. If you are curious, you can check out my OKRs on FocusOKR. Forging the idea into a product ready for validation in just three months was a great feeling. And since I use FocusOKR myself, I know this service works.
Perfect match
Building a minimum viable product using constraints created by ambitious goals seems easier. I knew that I had to release the application before the end of the quarter to fulfill my objective, which helps me to remove unnecessary ideas from a project. Of course, you can use another type of constraint, like a budgetary one or public declaration instead of OKRs. Everything that helps you boost development speed and allows you to release products faster is great. I recommend OKRs because they are tested in the field by giants and you can use them for personal needs. If you are interested, FocusOKR is ready to try for free. It works for me, maybe you will also find joy in achieving deep focus and squashing quarterly objectives.
I’m here to help
I’ve created this blog to share my experiences and teach others about the best methods for quicker product evaluation. I plan to create a new post every month or two. I know that this is a long time in the modern era of information overflow. You will forget about this blog until this time. So, I encourage you to follow this publication, so you know when a new article is posted.
Join the Corps
On this blog, I want to present other people’s view on MVP and quick product/idea evaluation as well. If you have successfully created and published MVP, have a software that allows creating products quicker, or you just want to share your thoughts on the concept, please contact me. I’d be happy to host a guest article or an interview.
