In Engineering, quarterly OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) can feel like a duplication of product planning. Basically, they say “Ship the Roadmap.” What new information are they communicating in that case? And if the OKRs say anything else, they’re in conflict the roadmap!
An example (that I made up):
In Marketing, quarterly OKRs express our intentions clearly. They work really well to describe the focus for this time period. Marketing doesn’t complain about having to make OKRs.
A marketing example (that I made up):
Why are OKRs easier in Marketing?
Partly: Marketing is closer to project work, while Engineering (at places like Honeycomb) is product work. Projects like Marketing campaigns fit within a quarter or two, while product work is an ongoing rhythm of updates.
There’s an ongoing rhythm of work in Marketing, too! There are ads to run, webinars to run, emails to send, events to staff. OKRs express which ads and webinars and events — who we’re targeting and with what message.
Does this duplicate the campaign briefs? … yes. Therefore, OKRs often mention only new campaigns, new audiences or channels. They say what we’re spending money and time on this quarter, that we don’t do every quarter.
Regular ongoing work doesn’t show up in OKRs, usually. That’s what KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are for.
Marketing has KPIs for their core job: bringing in leads, which become sales opportunities. We count those. We monitor website traffic, ad performance, SEO ranking, webinar attendance, contacts made at events.
These KPI numbers only show up in OKRs when we’re trying to improve them or get them differently, like in a new audience or with a new message. OKRs express shifts in focus, changes in process, or conversations we need to have.
Engineering has KPIs for our core job: running software and shipping updates. Service-Level Objectives (SLOs) and Accelerate metrics like Deployment Frequency tell us we’re working smoothly.
Shipping features from the roadmap is a chunk of our core job. It shouldn’t usually be in our OKRs. OKRs say what is different this quarter, what we’re changing, and what we’re trying to figure out.
Wait a minute! One of these examples is “Smooth launch of Frontend Observability.” Doesn’t that say ‘ship the roadmap’?
Shipping the features is part of a smooth launch, but it doesn’t end there. Of all the features we’re shipping this quarter, that one is the most critical to the business. Its presence in the OKRs tells people that we’ll push other work, we’ll respond immediately to bug reports, we’ll support this release with enthusiasm.
When a team’s OKRs duplicate the roadmap, I read that as “We aren’t trying to improve. This is a quarter for trudging along.” Not a good sign.
OKRs are for “What is special about this quarter? What is new? How do we want to be different? What do we want to figure out?”
Let OKRs highlight a special focus. Don’t try to cram everything you do into them.