Question of the week: the OKR Set - made with love ;-)

Happy monday! Time for a new question of the week:

What makes a good OKR set for you? What is your focus, what is important to you?

Good topic? Then join the discussion!

Dani :slight_smile:

You can count them on one hand
Bonus points if you only need 1 finger

Company level OKR

There should only be one OKR to rule 'em all, unless you’re Google.

If you stick to this, I think there’s a fair chance to improve forward in the upcoming cycle.

Team level OKRs

For the team level, it should be possible that the team can derive initiatives and work on them on their own, without any bigger dependencies to other teams.

The fewer the OKRs, the better. This also includes the number of Key Results which should be 2-4. I think three (3) is a good number of key results.

Remember, as a team, you have to derive initiatives out of this, which is a multiplier.

As a starter, I would also recommend 1 or max. 2 OKR sets per team.

No TODO list

A great OKR set is not a TODO list.

Just the change to focus on, not everything you want to do

Of course there’s work besides the OKR set.

But the OKR set defines the change you seek for in the upcoming cycle.

That’s why OKR is not a “What’s not on the OKR set must not be done” which is completely non-sense.

Some further tidbits: C-Level - What no one told you about OKRs - Speaker Deck

Agreed however instead of team we would recommend project or squad OKRs and while OKR are not to do lists they should be connected to the project / task / epic / issue management.

From our experience of over 60 OKR implementation, some KR can be tickoff deliverables rather than clear measurement (Finalize, Launch, etc ) as leading KRs but need outcome related lagging KRs