Writing good, well structured OKRs increases performance and engagement.
While sales and marketing OKRs are often easier to set, product and engineering teams find it a bit harder to write meaningful OKRs. In this article, we'll share some of the challenges that Product teams face when setting the OKRs and share tips on how to resolve them.
We often hear these questions from the product teams before setting OKRs:
To answer these questions, let's define how product teams often work.
The main goal of the product team is to release the product that would solve the problem (Jobs-To-Be-Done) of its customers, and customers are willing to pay for it.
Thus, let's break down the product lifecycle in a few steps:
For each of these steps, we'll define a few OKRs. Depending on which stage is your product, you might select one of few OKRs from the list to align your team and achieve the best results.
During the user research, your main task is to understand what problems do your users have and validate that your solution works for them. At this phase, you're more focused on activities (validated ideas, tested prototypes, conducted user interviews, etc.)
Objective 1: Validate the problem-solution fit for the product
Key Results:
Objective 2: Implement robust user-testing of our product
Key Results:
When working on the design and developing the product, the team shifts from validating the idea towards the speed with which they deliver the iterations.
Objective 3: Increase the delivery speed of the new features
Key Results:
Objective 4: Build a high-performing product team
Key Results:
In the release metrics, we specify here only the product-related metrics. Number of users, number of sign-ups, etc. are marketing metrics. The product team cannot directly influence marketing metrics.
Objective 5: Conduct a successful product launch for v2
Key Results:
Objective 6: Improve the product release process
Key Results:
After the release, it's good to monitor and improve the AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue Referral). Depending on what is the most critical for your product, it's recommended to focus on 1-2 categories during one period. Also, it's better to start from the very beginning of the funnel. Otherwise, you might not benefit from the improvements in your product, since users might not reach that part of the funnel yet.
Note: some Objectives have 5+ Key Results. Feel free to select the ones that are the most important for your team. Best to have 2-5 Key Results per Objective.
Objective 7: Simplify user onboarding
Key Results:
Objective 8: Increase user engagement
Key Results:
Objective 9: Improve customer satisfaction
Key Results:
Objective 10: Skyrocket profits per user
Key Results:
Objective 11: Encourage users to refer our product
Key Results:
Objective 12: Increase product team learning
Key Results:
Objective 13: Create a dream product team
Key Results:
Objective 14: Share knowledge of our product team with the community
Key Results:
Product Management OKRs are not easy and require some time to master them and use them effectively. It's ok to have value-based Key Results before the release of the product. But after the release, it's best to focus on the most critical metrics of your product.
Here are more OKR examples for Marketing, Engineering, Sales, Human Resources/People Ops teams.
Need a simple and free tool for your team to track OKRs? Check a free OKR tool Peoplelogic.
Peoplelogic has 80+ templates of OKRs with metrics and you can add them to your cycle with just one click.
Includes:
- OKR principles
- Formulas & scores
- OKR methodology
- Step-by-step guide
- Free OKR templates
- Common mistakes
Includes:
- OKR principles
- Formulas & scores
- OKR methodology
- Step-by-step guide
- Free OKR templates
- Common mistakes
08/04/2023
Peoplelogic gives me access to real-time data about my workforce that I can't view in any of our other talent systems!
Introducing our AI Review Results feature, an AI-powered tool designed to give instant, actionable insights once a performance review is completed.