OKR Eight Questions-Frequently Asked Questions and Thoughts About OKR

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With the successful practice of OKRs in foreign companies such as Intel and Google, domestic ByteDance, Huawei and other companies, more and more companies have realized the importance of OKRs for organizational development and have begun to introduce OKRs. Introducing OKR corporate culture, a powerful OKR tool is indispensable. CODING OKR can provide enterprises with rich process practices and collaborative reminders, improve employee engagement, and promote the success of company operations and integration of production, research, operation and maintenance . The following will take CODING OKR as an example to explain the problems that most companies will encounter when implementing OKR and some thinking.

Common OKR definitions on the network

1. The difference between OKR and KPI

OKR’s positioning is first of all a communication tool, which is a plan-do-check-action cycle. OKR requires how to complete an ambitious project more efficiently, so many project management tool vendors like to design OKR. The essence of KPI is a management tool, which mainly examines performance from results, does not pay attention to the process, and uses indicators to speak for everything. KPI emphasizes how to achieve the predetermined goals with quality and quantity.

In theory, KPIs must be formulated in strict accordance with SMART standards, and whether they reach or even reach the ratio (less than 100% or greater than 100%) must be measurable. The OKR goal setting is to be ambitious, have some challenges, and some make you uncomfortable. Generally speaking, the "best" OKR score is between 0.6-0.7. If someone gets 1 point, then the goal set by his OKR is obviously not ambitious enough; but people with low scores should not be blamed. Instead, he should use work data to help him improve his OKR goals for the next quarter. CODING OKR is also about to introduce a scoring system and scoring report to help companies establish a feedback mechanism more quickly and help employees better establish a sense of responsibility.

CODING OKR can associate items, mark the progress through the completion of the associated items and record dynamically, so as to evaluate whether the initial formulation and final completion of the OKR have a strong association orientation, so that the person in charge can adjust flexibly at any time.

goals can be related across projects, and the progress of related matters, goals and key results do not affect each other

Based on the definition of OKR as challenging the comfort zone, committed goals can be understood as KPIs, and ultra-conventional goals can be understood as OKRs. OKR is the path, KPI is the result, what is unchanged is the result, and what is changed is the path. KPI has a very strong result orientation, and OKR requires multiple iterations to progress gradually. This is very similar to the central idea of agile Scrum advocated by Need to be agile to execute and quickly embrace change.

2. How long does it take to implement OKR to feel the effect?

OKR itself is not complicated. Compared with other traditional management tools, it is simple and easy to operate. The simpler the thing, the more vital it is. Generally speaking, after OKR runs for a cycle in the enterprise (in general, a cycle refers to a quarter, but bimonthly OKRs can also be executed, such as Feishu), the team can master OKR formulation, alignment, tracking, review, etc. The operating procedures and methods of each link. After two or three cycles, the team can optimize the operation of OKR according to the actual situation of its own work to make it more compatible with the actual work scenario and business process. After four cycles, the team will think more about how to use OKR to promote self-growth and achieve organizational goals. With all these changes, the biggest gain for the team is to feel hope and push them to be more proactive in promoting these positive changes.

Like other management methods, OKR is designed to help organizations improve the efficiency of resource utilization. The quantity and quality of resources will not have a direct impact on the purpose of using corporate resources. we use OKR, we should pursue the characteristics of OKR's focus on strategy, focus on logic, alignment and coordination, bottom-up, openness and transparency, and positive feedback . Only by continuously strengthening these characteristics in practice, OKR can play its due role.

3. Should the final result of OKR be linked to performance or bonuses?

OKR is not synonymous with employee evaluation, nor is it for evaluating employees, but always reminding everyone what their core tasks are. OKR is related to the company’s goals and how each employee contributes to these goals. Performance evaluation (completely evaluating employees Performance during a fixed period) should be independent of its OKR. When companies started to get in touch with OKR, managers generally expressed this concern: Since OKR has nothing to do with assessment, will the team have enthusiasm in practice? This concern actually reflects three problems:

1. The management does not have enough knowledge of OKR;
2. The management is not sure whether they have the ability and effort to promote the internal initiative of employees, and worry that the absence of external temptation will lead to weak work promotion, which is actually a cowardly performance in management;
3. The management itself is not persistent and firm enough in the middle and late stages of the implementation of OKR. OKR advocates alignment and coordination to achieve organizational synergy.

Excessive motivation of individuals will weaken the power of coordination, lead to internal competition, and undermine the open and transparent field. Therefore, we should pay more attention to the motivation of the team than the motivation of individuals.

4. How to carry out OKR development discussion meeting?

The agenda for making OKRs is generally:

1. The CEO (or Team Leader) elaborates the vision and big goals, and introduces the current industry changes, competitive environment and trend judgments;
2. The COO (or team leader) and moderator will draw the preliminary business indicators and events on the whiteboard or show them with a projector;
3. Discuss the important business indicators and events prepared;
4. According to their own responsibilities, each person writes the O that they think is important on the CODING personal goal column. If they are not in the business indicators and events just discussed, they will be marked when filling in;
5. Everyone interprets the O set by themselves, sometimes in order to save time, they will also be presented and interpreted separately in groups;
6. Vote to determine O, and create it in the corresponding position of the CODING team goal;
7. Use the same process to determine KR and associate corresponding items;
8. Determine the person in charge of the OKR and the execution and acceptance time.

target details page provides a complete target situation

5. How to measure the acceptance of OKR by team members to ensure the smooth implementation of OKR?

The team needs to establish three cultural atmospheres in the four stages of OKR implementation, follow-up, review, and scoring, namely: respect, feedback, and recognition.

respect

In the first six months to one year of the implementation of OKR, employees need to be encouraged to set personal goals independently, and at the same time link the measurement results of team goals, implement them independently, and give feedback. The team management does not intervene strongly, and can observe and assist regularly. Although many OKR articles tell us the concept of "team goals are greater than personal goals", it is recommended to do the opposite in the early implementation. Employees are encouraged to follow the SMART principle of OKR, first think about their own value and ability boundaries, and then explore relevance and extension At the same time, we tell our employees that we have achieved about 60% of our goals. This shows that our goals are correct. We might as well be bold.

Personal goal setting, progress view and adjustment

Feedback

I understand that many HR or Team Leaders worry about the acceptance of team members when they implement OKR. In fact, employees all want to be "authorized" and "incentivized", rather than managers pointing to their work, employees also want to express their views to managers, rather than working hard for a year, and finally know that the manager The praise and criticism of work performance; employees are also eager to share their goals and plans with others on a regular basis, and they also want to know the progress of their colleagues' work.

Open and transparent CODING OKR can help motivate them to think from different angles : Are these the right things that I/you/we should be concerned about? If I/you/we complete them, will it be considered a huge success? Do you have any suggestions for me/we can do better?

Feedback can be very constructive, but only if it is specific enough. In developmental organizations, feedback is usually led and arranged by the human resources department. In more mature organizations, feedback is mostly unconstrained, real-time and multi-directional, and most of them are conducted in an open conversation within the organization regardless of time and place. For companies, the opportunity for two-way communication between employees and their superiors is very valuable. For example, employees can ask managers what they need to do to succeed, and managers can also know what help they need from employees. Analogous to the introduction of Agile Scrum culture in CODING, the five major activities are:

1. Backlog Grooming Meeting;
2. Iteration planning meeting (Sprint Planning Meeting);
3. Daily standup meeting (Standup Meeting);
4. Review meeting (Retrospective Meeting);
5. Retrospective Meeting.

Five Scrum Activities

With reference to the above figure, in the OKR implementation cycle, some OKR kick-off meetings, writing evaluation meetings, quarterly execution review meetings, excellent OKR execution commendation meetings, etc. can also be held. CODING is a kind of agile, and CODING OKR is also a kind of agile people, emphasizing that it is self-organizing and self-driving. Only when you continuously experience it carefully in practical applications, can you feel the enterprise and organization With the gradual progress of Agile or OKR, it becomes more and more efficient and innovative.

Recognized

• encourages recognition among colleagues: When employees’ achievements are unanimously recognized by colleagues, it will inspire a culture of gratitude;
• establishes a clear standard: correctly identifies whether employees are currently performing actions or results: completing special projects, achieving company goals, or demonstrating company value;
• share stories that help increase the sense of identity: can use real-time communication tools, company internal knowledge base or CODING Wiki to share the stories behind these achievements, give recognition more meaning, and increase the frequency and availability of recognition. Even small achievements should be praised. For example, the extra effort to complete the project before the deadline, the polish and perfection of the proposal, or the small things that are supposed to be done in the manager's eyes.

6. Does OKR advocate public visibility for all staff in the department?

Yes, openness and transparency is one of the important principles of OKR . For example, Bytedance has a very distinctive management concept called "Context, not Control" (Context, not Control), which means that employees can judge what to do on the basis of complete information, and encourage employees to think actively. , Instead of emphasizing processes, subordinates and commands. In ByteDance, everyone's OKR is public. Even employees on the first day of employment can directly see Zhang Yiming's OKR.

"For example, we have a lot of cross-departmental cooperation. The situation of'sitting together in a meeting but not knowing who the other party is' is very common. My usual practice is to pick up the phone, open his avatar, and take a look at his OKR. You will know what his main responsibilities and work focus are in minutes.” Therefore, in Bytedance, OKR is not only the result of top-down dismantling, but also related to colleagues in the department and cross-departmental colleagues. The foundation for efficient communication and collaboration. Using CODING OKR, you can set the viewing permissions of different roles according to the organizational structure. Of course, we encourage all members to be publicly visible.

Set permissions for the corresponding user group in "Team Management" -> "Permission Configuration"

7. How should KR in OKR be written? How to grasp the granularity?

• If your KR exceeds 2 lines, it is likely to be unclear.
• If your KR description is flooded with internal team terminology, such as "publishing CI metadata cascade and access control capabilities," then they are usually not good KRs. really important for 160b0aa1cce1fc is not the "release" action, but what the impact is . Why is "metadata concatenation" important? A better expression is this: "Release CI metadata connection and access control capabilities, improve R&D specifications, and increase data flow perspectives" or simply write: "Improve R&D specifications and increase data flow perspectives."
• KR Please use the real date . If the deadline for all KRs is the last day of the quarter, your plan is likely to be problematic.
• sure your KR is measurable , KR must be objectively scored at the end of each quarter. "Increase the number of registered users" is not a good KR. "Increase the average number of daily registered users by 25% before June 1st" is a good KR.
• sure that the metric is clear . If you say "one million users", you have to specify whether this refers to full-time users or just 7-day active users.
• must be output-oriented, not action-oriented . If your KR contains words like "consultation", "help", "analysis", "participation", then it actually describes actions rather than results. On the contrary, if you describe the impact of these actions on the end user, for example: "Update the automated use case library before June 7 to achieve fast and accurate automated execution", it is a qualified KR, and "update "Automated Use Case Library" is not.
• must be able to prove whether it has completed . This evidence is easily available and reliable. For example, the evidence can be a Wiki, a network disk on CODING, or a specific project dynamic, such as a list of changes within the project, document links, and published quality reports.

supports the addition and editing of key results, and supports the adjustment of indicator weights

8. How do programmers formulate OKR?

How to quantify the work of programmers? Number of bugs? Line of code? Version number? But these indicators are not feasible. Or compare the number of lines of code, bugs, versions, or shares between teams? None of these actually work. Who is willing to do forward-looking work, and who is willing to do risky work? For example, the introduction of ElasticSearch can theoretically improve search performance, but it may cause a lot of problems in the year of introduction, and how much benefit it can bring is still uncertain. At this time, how to formulate an OKR? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Assuming that the technical director receives the big strategic goal designated by the CEO as "20% user growth", he should formulate a KR that the members of the department can understand and proceed based on the team's resource advantage, such as:

1. Technical indicators that affect user growth include "installation package size", "app startup time", "app crash rate", "app power consumption", etc. After analysis, the technical team believes that the current installation package is too large and the App The startup time is longer, then these two related optimizations can be used as OKRs for the technical team: App installation package is reduced from 20M to 8M, App startup time is optimized from 2s to 500ms, and for these two KRs, the business person in charge is almost not It may be brought up.
2. One of the reasons that affect the user’s positive feedback is that the release tempo is too slow. Too slow is because there are too many versions and the test environment is insufficient. The test environment is insufficient because there are not enough machines. Then you can draw a goal: solve the problem of waiting for the version due to the insufficient test environment. problem. The decomposed KR can be "add 4 test environment machines" (yes, although it is a very simple thing, but it can also be used as KR), or "introduce Docker, support one machine to build 20 sets of environments) "(This KR is more in line with the understanding of technical personnel).
3. One of the reasons that affect user analysis and growth is that internal collaboration and demand flow are too slow. It often takes a week for the production and research side to split user stories into corresponding versions. The process of splitting and evaluating user stories is likely to be through some easy Use weak tools to record and remind. It is particularly important to re-evaluate a R&D project management tool. CODING is a one-stop software R&D management platform that includes tools such as code management, project collaboration, test management, continuous integration, product library, continuous deployment, team knowledge base, etc. It has iterative management, demand segmentation and flexibility in project collaboration. The follow-up Kanban view is very suitable for the flexible management needs and rapid iteration of innovative companies.

powerful and flexible project management functions, allowing the team to collaborate efficiently

Through the above methods of thinking and decomposition, the final technical team has to do as follows:

• Use CODING to quickly implement agile development and DevOps development methods to achieve R&D efficiency upgrades.
• The App installation package has been reduced from 20M to 8M.
• App startup time is optimized from 2s to 500ms.
• Introduce Docker, support one machine to build 20 sets of environments.

to sum up

OKR is an important framework for agile strategic business management, project planning and portfolio management. It is hoped that CODING can help the team implement the four phases of OKR start, writing, follow-up, and review, and record the team members’ cycle at any time. Challenges completed and contributions to the team.