okr-planning

## OKR Structure

**Objective**: Qualitative, inspiring, time-bound
- Answers: "Where do we want to go?"
- Should be ambitious but achievable (70% completion = good)
- One sentence, memorable, motivating

**Key Results**: Quantitative, measurable, specific
- Answer: "How do we know we're getting there?"
- 2-5 per objective
- Include a number (baseline → target)
- Measurable at the end of the quarter with no debate

### Good OKR Examples

**Objective**: Make onboarding so good that users succeed on day one

Key Results:
1. Increase Day 1 activation rate from 35% to 55%
2. Reduce median time-to-first-value from 14 minutes to 4 minutes
3. Decrease "how do I get started" support tickets from 120/week to 30/week

**Objective**: Build a revenue engine that scales without scaling the sales team

Key Results:
1. Increase self-serve revenue from $40K to $100K MRR
2. Achieve free-to-paid conversion rate of 8% (currently 3%)
3. Launch usage-based pricing tier with 50+ paying customers

**Objective**: Become the most trusted brand in our category

Key Results:
1. Achieve NPS score of 60 (currently 38)
2. Publish 20 case studies from customers with measurable ROI
3. Reach 5,000 community members in Discord (currently 1,200)

### Bad OKR Examples (and fixes)

❌ Objective: "Improve the product"
(Too vague, not inspiring)
✅ "Deliver a product experience that users recommend to peers"

❌ KR: "Launch feature X"
(Output, not outcome — shipping ≠ success)
✅ "Feature X drives 30% increase in weekly active users"

❌ KR: "Improve customer satisfaction"
(Not measurable — what number? from what to what?)
✅ "Increase CSAT score from 3.8 to 4.5 on post-interaction survey"

❌ KR: "100% of sprint stories completed"
(Activity metric, not impact metric)
✅ "Reduce average bug fix time from 5 days to 2 days"

## Run Quarterly OKR Planning

### Week -3: Preparation
- Review last quarter's OKRs: what scored well? what missed? why?
- Gather input: customer feedback, analytics, team retrospectives
- Leadership shares company-level objectives for next quarter
- Each team lead drafts 1-2 team objectives aligned to company OKRs

### Week -2: Alignment
- Cross-team review: do team OKRs create conflicts or dependencies?
- Resolve resource conflicts (two teams need same engineer)
- Identify shared KRs (both teams contribute to the same metric)
- Challenge: "If we hit all these KRs, will we actually achieve the objective?"

### Week -1: Finalization
- Lock OKRs (no changes after this point)
- Each team presents OKRs to the company (transparency)
- Set up tracking: dashboard, weekly check-in cadence
- Identify leading indicators for each KR (don't wait until end of quarter)

### During Quarter: Execution
**Weekly**: 15-minute OKR check-in per team
- Traffic light each KR: 🟢 on track | 🟡 at risk | 🔴 off track
- For 🟡/🔴: what's the plan to get back on track?
- No surprises at quarter end

**Mid-quarter**: Formal review
- Are KRs still the right measures?
- Any external changes (market, competitor, tech) that require adjustment?
- Adjust confidence levels, not the KRs themselves

### End of Quarter: Scoring and Retrospective
Score each KR: 0.0 to 1.0
- 0.0-0.3: Failed to make meaningful progress
- 0.4-0.6: Made progress but fell short
- 0.7-0.9: Delivered strong results (this is the sweet spot)
- 1.0: Hit exactly — either sandbagged or got lucky

Average KR scores = Objective score.
Team target: 0.6-0.7 average (means OKRs are ambitious enough)
If you're consistently scoring 1.0, your OKRs aren't ambitious enough.

## Align OKRs Across Teams

### Company → Team → Individual

Company Objective: "Achieve product-market fit in the SMB segment"
  └─ Company KR: "Reach $500K ARR from SMB customers"

    Product Team Objective: "Make the product irresistible for SMB users"
      └─ KR: "SMB trial-to-paid conversion from 5% to 15%"
      └─ KR: "SMB onboarding completion from 40% to 80%"

    Marketing Team Objective: "Fill the SMB pipeline with qualified leads"
      └─ KR: "Generate 500 qualified SMB leads per month"
      └─ KR: "Reduce SMB CAC from $800 to $400"

    Engineering Team Objective: "Enable SMB self-service at scale"
      └─ KR: "99.9% uptime for core workflows"
      └─ KR: "Reduce p95 page load from 3s to 1s"

### Rules for Alignment
1. Teams own their OKRs — company provides direction, not dictation
2. 60% top-down, 40% bottom-up — teams know their domain best
3. Dependencies must be explicit — if Team A needs Team B, it's in the OKRs
4. No duplicate KRs — if two teams share a KR, assign one owner
5. Individual OKRs are optional — team-level is sufficient for most orgs

## Avoid OKR Anti-Patterns

1. **Too many OKRs**: Max 3 objectives, 3-5 KRs each. If everything is a priority, nothing is.

2. **KRs as tasks**: "Launch feature X" is a task. "Feature X drives 20% increase in activation" is a KR. Measure impact, not output.

3. **Sandbagging**: If teams always score 1.0, they're setting easy goals. OKRs should feel uncomfortable.

4. **OKRs as performance reviews**: If KR scores affect compensation, teams will sandbag. Decouple OKRs from performance reviews.

5. **Set and forget**: OKRs require weekly check-ins. Without them, you discover failure at the end of the quarter.

6. **No baseline**: "Improve retention" means nothing without "from X% to Y%". Always include the current number.

7. **Missing counter-metrics**: "Increase signups" without tracking quality leads to gaming (bot signups, low-quality traffic).

We're launching a project management tool for remote design teams. Help me create a writing okrs.

Here are our Q2 OKRs for the platform team. Check if key results are measurable and objectives are ambitious enough.