How does your team map OKRs (objectives, key results) and the timeline and roadmap?

charlottefountaine·Jun 11, 2021

Posted in:Advice Management and Leadership Productivity Startups Tech

I'm SUPER interested to know how your team maps OKRs, and how you map your timeline / roadmap?At the moment in our small start up team (3 employees, 4+ freelancers) we use google docs for OKRs and a google sheet for our timeline.It's hard to keep a google sheet gantt chart updated, and understandable to everyone in the team. Also, if we don't meet a timeline, I don't want to change the gantt chart to reflect the lateness, I want to be able to say, this was the target time, this is the new deadline. It's hard to keep the progress that we make towards OKRs visible and obtainable for the whole team in just a google doc. - what software (if any) do you use for OKRs?- what software (if any) do you use for your roadmap?- how often do you check in on your OKRs and roadmap?- if you don't meet a deadline, how do you reflect that in your roadmap?I'm really interested in hearing pragmatic solutions you've actually implemented in your team, rather than general advice about best practice. If you're recommending a software make sure it's one that your team uses, or have used in the past. Thanks Elphas!

melaniecrissey·Jun 12, 2021

Hey Charlotte! Here’s a template for OKRs that’s a close copy of how our team managed them at a past startup: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pe0_z6SE57P8F1D1z5JMR9zERP1pK20S33wT7m5Vd24/editA few guidelines that make it work:- Once the OKRs are locked in for a time period or a cycle, you don’t edit the scoring rubric or the description; even if everything changes and you can no longer win points the OKR, you give yourself a “graceful zero” so you can reflect on why the KR didn’t work (bad reporting? priorities shifted? unforeseen circumstances?)- Company had a standing meeting to update OKR numbers every Friday and a bigger meeting to review at the end of the cycle; in the beginning we did 6 week cycles and eventually moved to quarterly cycles with a week for pre-planning OKRs for the upcoming cycle- At one point we used software called “7Geese” instead of the Google Sheet template but it looks like that app got acquired by Paycor? Not sure if it’s still available! As far as roadmaps:- ProductBoard is pretty cool for visualizing roadmaps and it’s flexible / easy to update when timelines shift- Beyond the cards on ProductBoard, my current team also uses a Google Sheet that’s simply a list of upcoming launches with rough estimate dates; this is the easiest thing to keep updatedI think one of the key things to making OKRs and product roadmaps work together is the KRs should be more focused on measurable results than on “we shipped this” or “we did that” on time.For example, a KR that reads: “enlist 10 customers in the Beta for x feature” puts healthy pressure on the team to either release the Beta within the OKR cycle or descope the Beta within the time period, but if you ship it and can’t get anyone to use it, you should score fewer points! Because getting something done isn’t really impactful if it’s not pushing the KR.Hope this helps!

charlottefountaine·Jun 14, 2021

This is exactly what I needed thanks Melanie!

samanthamoore·Jun 15, 2021

This is awesome Melanie thanks for sharing!