Enhancing Product Team Objectives with the OKR Technique

The Objectives and Key Results (OKR) technique has proven to be highly successful in technology product organizations of all sizes. While OKRs are versatile and can be used by anyone in any role, the way they are applied can significantly impact their effectiveness. Here, we explore how product teams can leverage OKRs to enhance their performance and alignment with company goals.

The Importance of Product Teams

A product team is a cross-functional group typically composed of a product manager, a product designer, and a small number of engineers. Additional specialists such as data analysts, user researchers, or test automation engineers may also be included. Each product team is responsible for a significant part of the company's product offering or technology. For instance, one team might handle mobile apps for drivers, another for riders, and another for secure payment handling.

Product teams bring together diverse skill sets from different functional departments to collaboratively solve complex business and technology problems. In larger organizations, there can be 20 to 50 of these teams, each with their own objectives aligned with the company's overarching goals.

Aligning Objectives with Company Goals

OKRs ensure that each product team understands how their work contributes to the company's success. As organizations scale, OKRs become essential for coordinating efforts across teams and preventing duplicate work. However, a common pitfall is having each functional department create their own OKRs independently. This can lead to confusion and misalignment, as team members receive conflicting directives from their functional managers and their product team.

For example, engineers might be told to focus on re-platforming, designers on responsive design, and QA on retooling. While these tasks are important, they might not address the business objectives the product team is supposed to solve, leading to frustration and suboptimal results.

Focusing OKRs at the Product Team Level

To avoid this, it’s crucial to focus OKRs at the product team level. Functional team or individual OKRs should not overshadow product team objectives. Instead, any significant functional objectives should be discussed and prioritized at the leadership level and then incorporated into the relevant product team's objectives.

Functional managers can still have their own objectives related to their departments without causing conflict. For instance, the head of UX design might work on a strategy for responsive design, the head of engineering on managing technical debt, the head of product management on delivering a product vision, and the head of QA on selecting a test automation tool. These objectives do not interfere with product team objectives as the functional heads are not part of the cross-functional teams.

Personal Growth Objectives

Individual contributors can also have personal growth-related objectives, such as improving their knowledge of a particular technology, provided these do not interfere with their primary responsibilities to their product team.?

Cascading OKRs

The key to effective OKR implementation in a product organization is to cascade objectives from the cross-functional product teams up to the company or business-unit level. This ensures that everyone is working towards the same business goals and prevents misalignment and confusion.

By focusing on product team-level OKRs, organizations can ensure that their teams are aligned, focused, and working efficiently towards shared business objectives. This approach not only enhances team performance but also drives overall organizational success.