OKRs—targets and key outcomes—are a preferred goal-setting approach. However can and do you have to use OKRs on product roadmaps? What advantages does this strategy provide and are there any drawbacks? These are the questions I’ll reply on this article.
Hearken to the audio model of this text:
What are OKRs?
OKRs are a technique for setting and monitoring targets. The acronym stands for targets and key outcomes. The target is the aim, which describes what you wish to obtain. The important thing outcomes state the particular standards that must be fulfilled to fulfill the target.
To make this extra concrete, let’s have a look at an instance:
Goal: Develop the product administration group.
Key outcome 1: Three product managers are employed.
Key outcome 2: The onboarding system is improved, and time-to-proficiency is diminished by 25%.
Key outcome 3: The product administration processes are tailored to protect the productiveness stage of the group.
As the instance reveals, OKRs are sometimes written in order that the target is qualitative, and the important thing outcomes are quantitative. Moreover, a small variety of key outcomes is usually employed.[1] Please word that I don’t declare to be an OKR knowledgeable. However I skilled OKRs first-hand at Intel—the place they had been initially invented—after I labored for the corporate within the late Nineties.[2]
What makes working with outcome-based targets like OKRs highly effective—and for some organisations difficult—is that they state what must be achieved however not how. Somewhat than handing a listing of duties to folks, targets are agreed. The people then decide how they are often met. This helps empower groups and forestall micromanagement.
What are Product Roadmaps?
A product roadmap is an actionable plan that describes how a product is more likely to evolve.[3] Historically, it’s a checklist of options that’s mapped onto a timeline. Happily, within the final ten years, outcome-based, goal-oriented roadmaps have turn out to be extra well-liked.
Under is an instance of how such a product roadmap is likely to be captured and the weather it would comprise.
Determine 1 reveals a particular goal-oriented roadmap template I developed, the GO Product Roadmap. You may obtain the template by clicking on the picture above.
Let’s take a fast have a look at the roadmap’s 5 components. A very powerful one is the aim, and it’s positioned in the course of the template on the third row. It describes the particular profit or end result the product ought to obtain. Pattern targets are buying prospects, growing engagement, and future-proofing the product by eradicating technical debt. The opposite 4 components provide extra info: The one on the primary row captures the date or the time-frame when a aim needs to be met, for instance, within the third quarter of 2024. The second row provides you the choice to state a title. That is helpful when assembly the product aim ends in a brand new main launch or product model, for example, iOS 17.4 and Android 14.0. The fourth row lists the product’s options. These are the outputs which are required to fulfill the aim. The fifth and last row captures the metrics to find out if a product aim has been met.
You may study extra concerning the GO product roadmap by watching the video beneath.
Can You Mix OKRs and Roadmaps?
OKRs and outcome-based product roadmaps each assume that setting particular targets helps folks do a terrific job. This similarity permits you to mix the 2 approaches. To take action, you will have two selections. You may both work with an outcome-based roadmap just like the one in Determine 1 and look at the aim as the target and the opposite roadmap components as the important thing outcomes. Alternatively, you’ll be able to create an OKR-based roadmap. Determine 2 reveals what such a plan may appear to be.
The construction in Determine 2 affords the identical info because the one in Determine 1 aside from the title factor. This turns into clearer once we use each templates aspect by aspect.
Determine 3 incorporates an extract of a GO Product Roadmap for a brand new healthy-eating product.[4] The preliminary providing—the MVP—ought to assist the customers perceive their consuming habits and purchase an preliminary person base. It needs to be accessible within the third quarter of 2024 and provide two key options. The MVP is considered successful if the product is likely one of the high 15 diabetes apps six weeks after its launch. The OKR-based roadmap reveals nearly the identical info. It first states the aim, adopted by the goal time-frame, the important thing options, and the success measurement.
As this instance illustrates, you’ll be able to fortunately mix OKRs and outcome-based product roadmaps, so long as the roadmap targets are SMART, that’s, particular, measurable, achievable, related, and time-bound.[5]
So What?
What can we take away from the above dialogue? First, understanding the connection between OKRs and product roadmaps may help you progress away from feature-based plans in the direction of goal-oriented ones—one thing I extremely advocate.
If your organization makes use of OKRs, you’ll be able to argue that an outcome-based roadmap brings you consistent with the goal-directed planning strategy used all through the enterprise. You could even think about using an OKR-based roadmap just like the one in Determine 2 if this makes it simpler to cease utilizing feature-based roadmaps. Bear in mind, although, that this may imply that you simply’ll must work with quarterly roadmap targets.[6]
This doesn’t essentially must be a problem, as I discover that these targets typically work nicely on roadmaps. However there are circumstances the place you’d like to decide on a shorter time-frame like six weeks or two months in addition to an extended one, for instance, 4 months. The previous tends to be the case when your product is younger or experiences a variety of uncertainty and alter. The latter applies when your product is in a gentle state and advantages from incremental enhancements slightly than larger adjustments.[7]
Second, it directs your consideration to the query of the place the outcomes or targets ought to come from. It’s not unusual in my expertise that stakeholders and senior managers decide the roadmap content material: The people primarily inform the particular person in command of the product what to placed on their roadmap. This strategy, nevertheless, is problematic. Not solely does it disempower product folks and product groups. It may additionally create a Frankenstein product—an providing that may be a assortment of unrelated options, affords a horrible worth proposition, and provides rise to a horrible person expertise.
A greater solution to decide the appropriate roadmap targets is utilizing an overarching product technique, as Determine 4 reveals.[8]
The product technique in Determine 4 describes the strategy you’ve chosen to attain product success. It captures key choices together with the wants the product ought to tackle, the customers and prospects who ought to profit from it, the enterprise advantages it ought to generate, and the standout options which are required to set itself other than competing choices.[9]
The product roadmap takes the technique as enter and states how it is going to be carried out within the subsequent, say 12 months. Its targets and targets consequently must be aligned with the technique. To attain this, you will have two choices—which I focus on in additional element in my ebook Strategize:
First, you’ll be able to derive the roadmap targets instantly from the wants and enterprise targets by breaking them into subgoals. Second, you need to use your key efficiency indicators (KPIs) to find roadmap targets resembling bettering engagement and eradicating technical debt. On this case, ensure that the targets enable you certainly make progress in the direction of the overarching strategic targets.
Utilizing a longer-term product technique and deriving particular intermediate targets from it’s not dissimilar to how OKRs are used to set organisational targets. The highest-level OKRs are often derived from the enterprise technique—or “mission” because it was referred to after I labored at Intel. Should you apply an identical strategy at your organization, then this could enable you mirror the organisational planning strategy to your product and construct a product roadmap that’s primarily based on the product technique slightly than particular person stakeholder requests.[10]
TL;DR
Can you employ OKRs on a product roadmap? Sure, most actually. Do you have to use them in your plan? It relies upon. If it helps you progress from feature-based to outcome-based roadmaps and embrace a goal-oriented product planning strategy, then the reply is sure. Using an OKR-based roadmap just like the one in Determine 2 is more likely to be useful for you. In any other case, don’t fear. You may merely regard the result on the roadmap as the target and the opposite components as the important thing outcomes—if OKRs matter to you and your organisation.
Notes
[1] See John Doerr, Measure What Issues, p. 7, and Christina Wodtke, Radical Focus, 2nd ed., p. 101.
[2] OKRs had been invented at Intel within the 1970ies and have become extra broadly used after Google began to undertake them from 1999 onwards, see John Doerr, Measure What Issues.
[3] See Roman Pichler, Strategize, 2nd ed., p. 146.
[4] For simplicity’s sake, Determine 3 makes use of solely a single aim. See the article The GO Product Roadmap for a roadmap instance with a number of targets.
[5] As I focus on within the article Ought to Product Roadmaps Have Dates, exhibiting dates and particular time frames is often useful on inner roadmaps, which information and align stakeholders and groups. Should you work with a public product roadmap, then I counsel utilizing obscure time frames resembling within the second half of 2004 or in 2025.
[6] OKRs are often set for 1 / 4, see Radical Focus, 2nd ed., p. 102. A product technique, in distinction, covers an extended interval, for instance, one to 2 years for digital merchandise.
[7] That’s sometimes the case when a product has entered the maturity stage.
[8] Determine 4 reveals a part of my product technique mannequin.
[9] Notice that I assume that the product technique has been validated, that’s, that its statements don’t comprise any vital dangers and assumptions and are backed up by empirical proof. See my ebook Strategize for extra recommendation on technique validation.
[10] See the article The Technique Stack for recommendation on learn how to join the enterprise and product methods.
