What are good OKRs for product management?

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 meant to be a single meaningful number, KR express progress towards an objective, KPI express a behaviour of the business or market that might not be related to an objective (yet!). As such a KR is often a leading metric (progress toward a future state), KPI is often a lagging metric (observing the result of various past dynamics).

For OKRs, Objectives are usually easy to come by, but the core of OKRs’ success are good Key Results. The best Key Results have those characteristics:

• Concise to communicate succinctly and efficiently horizontally and vertically,

• Reflect incremental progress (ideally evolves linearly from starting point to finish line),

• Are leading metrics (can be updated as we progress towards the goal),

• Meaningfully targets a successful milestones towards the Objective.

Here are a few examples of Key Results I have been using in the past:

• Example about fixing a situation expressed as a percentage from current number to future number: Bring quality issue resolution turn around time to matches [product] median [at target number] by [date]

• Example about ensuring consistency expressed as a percentage of total delivery over the period: Deliver [product] roadmap updates to the community [at frequency] during [period]

• Example about a single delivery broken down in somewhat equal phases or deliverable: Deliver sales enablement material for [product] for each [identified categories] by [date].

• Example of an exceptional case when a KPI has a lifecycle so short it can be used as a Key Result: Turn community sentiment towards [product] from [baseline] to [target] by [date].

See question “What are some of the worst KPIs for Product Managers to commit to achieving?” for patterns to avoid.

See question: “How do you approach setting crisp KPIs and targets for Engine features and linking them to your topline metrics?” for my step by step process for realistic OKRs.