Objectives, Key Results, and Software Teams

Andy Grove of Intel fame is credited with a powerful framework for business goal achievement. It is called Objectives and key results or OKR for short. The objective is a clearly defined goal. Key results are the specific measures used to track the goal.

Google adopted this strategy early on with Larry Page crediting it to their repeated spurts of 10x growth. Their success made OKRs part of Linkedin, Twitter, GoPro, and Uber to name a few. In all, many of the world’s top companies rely on this tool to achieve massive success.

While excellent for company wide acceleration, it may be advantageous to apply this methodology to Software Teams. In effect, creating quarterly goals that require cross-department buy-in to achieve the end result of higher quality software more closely tied to business objectives. Be it software as a product or as an internal business strategy.

Creating OKRs

“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,” explains Andy Grove in his book, High Output Management. The basic premise is to measure each key result to determine if the objective was achieved.