What are good OKRs for product management?

Objectives and Key Results are meant to encourage cross-functional alignment and collaboration. In product management, it is essential to think of OKRs as a method for prioritizing scope that will help drive the top business KPIs, so that your product roadmap has a built-in mechanism for considering how to help the business succeed.  The below example is one I have seen work well:  Top Level Business Objective: Increase enterprise ARR by 20% Product Key Result: Deliver paid feature X to help com ...Read More

This is the best question to start with! Objectives and Key Results are often praised because of the stakeholders’ expectation of clarity, alignment, and clear/standard reporting. OKRs are often hated by teams because of being badly defined, in a way that misrepresent success or progress, and get costly to update with little meaning. Before going into details it’s important to note that there is often confusion between Key Results (KR in OKR) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). While both are ...Read More

First, let’s define what “good” means: an OKR is measurable, actionable, and insightful - guiding decision-making, tracking progress, and surfacing opportunities for improvement. I like to define OKRs along these dimensions: North Star metric: The ultimate outcome that defines success. Input metrics: Indicators that drive the outcome (e.g., feature usage). Output metrics: Metrics that reflect the result of the inputs (e.g., resolution accuracy). Counter metrics: Ensure progress in one area doesn ...Read More

A good framework I use follows the product adoption lifecyle curve: At Introduction (think MVP) the main objective is establishing product-market fit. At Growth you need to shift objectives to focus on maximize growth & share. If you're not profitable at this stage, focus on getting to profitability. At Maturity, maximize profit and aim to extend the lifetime of the product through diffentiation or adjacent products/segments. At Decline your focus is to remain profitable and transition cusot ...Read More

True OKRs should be cross-functional and not limited to specific areas such as Product Management, Design, UX, or SRE. The "Objective" (O) in OKRs should promote alignment across teams, helping to avoid local optimizations. Key Results (KRs) can be function-specific and have asynchronous relationships with KRs from other functions. If functional OKRs are necessary, ensure that objectives remain aligned across functions. Regardless of the logistics of OKR training, Product Management can leverage ...Read More

I'm not sure there's a good, one-size-fits-all answer for this question. OKRs (objectives and key results) are meant to drive behavior change and create focus for your team. I think most teams that use OKRs intend to use them in this way, but fall into a few common traps: Using OKRs as a management tool to drive outputs instead of outcomes If you're like me, at some point you might have been assigned an OKR without measurable "key results" Creating too many OKRs, which completely undercuts the p ...Read More

Some tips on product management OKR if your organization uses OKR framework and cascading down to functional teams Use this opportunity to align product priorities with company goals. Especially focusing on customer adoption and product engagement drivers   Think beyond feature completion and also focus on customer/business outcomes. Leverage this to align with Engineering and use this opportunity to change definition of done from ‘release complete’ to ‘meeting customer/business goals’ with road ...Read More

Strong Product Management OKRs tie user value, business impact, and execution excellence together. Examples: Objective 1: Deliver products users love and adopt quickly KR1: Increase feature adoption rate by 30% within 60 days of launch. KR2: Achieve NPS > 50 for new feature experiences. KR3: Reduce time-to-value for new users by 40%. Objective 2: Drive measurable business outcomes KR1: Improve retention by 15%. KR2: Grow active usage (DAU/MAU) by 25%. KR3: Launch 2 product initiatives contrib ...Read More

When I think about good OKRs for product management, I start from one principle:they should describe business outcomes created for customers, not project completion. So instead of “ship feature X by Q3" ,I aim for something like "help this user segment reach a concrete result” with key results that are measurable. I usually aim for OKRs that are: Customer-led: phrased in terms of what changes for the user. Business-tied: clearly connect to revenue, retention, adoption, or efficiency. Outcome-foc ...Read More