Objectives & Key Results (OKR)

Solution Overview

OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal system. It is a simple tool to create alignment and engagement around measurable goals. It is a goal-setting and performance management framework used by individuals, teams, and organizations to set clear Objectives and track progress through measurable Key Results. It helps align efforts, drive focus, and promote accountability towards achieving ambitious goals.

There are two options you can choose from, or use them both, to manage Objectives in the system:

1. Objectives & Key Results (OKR) Framework 
2. SAFe Objective & Key Results (OKR) Framework

It also allow to connect OKR to KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and calculate Key Results progress based on the defined KPIs and their Measurements.

Objectives & Key Results (OKR) Framework

This solution enables Ultimate Objective, Strategic Objective, and Tactical Objective.

• Ultimate Objectives are usually created on a company level representing high level Objectives.
• Then they split into Strategic Objectives, representing Objectives for specific departments or parts of an organization
• They further split into Tactical Objectives, or team level Objectives.

You can connect Portfolio Epics, Capabilities (Epics), Features, User Stories and Bugs to any level of Objectives of your choice to represent what work has been done to achieve Objectives.

When creating Ultimate, Strategic or Tactical Objective, you’ll define which Period  it should be connected to. It can be Year, Quarter, Month or Period . The Objective will inherit Planned Start Date and Planned End Date from the connected Period.

After the solution installation you will find the OKR folder with a list of different hierarchies:

• Objective Hierarchy – this list shows the full hierarchy of objectives (Ultimate Objective - Strategic Objective - Tactical Objective)

• Ultimate Objectives – on this list you can see and create Ultimate Objectives and define their Key Results.

• Strategic Objectives – on this list you can see and create Strategic Objectives and define their Key Results.

• Tactical Objectives – on this list you can see and create Tactical Objectives and define their Key Results.

SAFe Objective & Key Results (OKR) Framework

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is collaborative framework for establishing clear goals and measurable outcomes.  When used within SAFe, OKRs can help to support the Core Values of transparency and alignment between the Enterprise and Portfolio strategy and the work of the Agile Release Trains and Agile Teams to deliver on this strategy. Additionally, OKRs can be applied to measure organizational improvement activities, including the desired outcomes for the SAFe transformation.

The simplicity of OKRs goes a long way toward explaining their popularity. The Objective defines the business outcome you strive to achieve. The Key Results are the measurable success criteria used to track progress toward the objective. For each Objective, there are typically between two to five Key Results.

The application of OKRs within SAFe falls into three main use cases:

• Enhancing strategic alignment across a SAFe Portfolio
• Defining Business Outcomes for Portfolio Epics and Lean Business Cases
• Setting improvement goals for the SAFe transformation

The solution enables a hierarchy of Objectives, which can be created for Portfolios, Value Streams, Solution Trains, Agile Release Trains, Teams, Portfolio Epics and/or Products, so that you can define Objectives or Business Outcomes for each of them.

So now after the installing the solution you can create Objectives and define Key Results for them on any of the mentioned items view:

When creating an Objective, you’ll define what Portfolio, which Period and which entity it should be connected to if needed. It can be Year, Quarter, Month or Period . The Objective will inherit Planned Start Date and Planned End Date from the connected Period.

If you define a Portfolio Objective, simply set Portfolio Objective to true, when creating an Objective.

As soon as Objectives and Key Results are defined you can also connect Work Items, such as Capabilities (Epics), Features, User Stories and Bugs to it.

Work Items can be connected to more than one Objective.

Objective Hierarchy 

As the Objectives can be defined on different organization levels, it's possible to have a hierarchy of objectives.

So let's say you cerated an Objective for a Portfolio, you can now create a child Objective for Portfolio Epics, or for Value Stream/Solution Train/ART/Team or a Product. This will allow to trace the Objectives connections.

You can also see the hierarchy of Objectives on Objective Hierarchy view:

OKR: Connection to KPIs

Also can be enabled a connection between KPI solution and SAFe OKR solution, so that you can track a progress of the defined Objectives based on KPI Measurements.

So now, when you create a new Key Result for an Objective, you can link this Key Result to a KPI (Indicator) which you'd like to progress on.

If a KPI is defined for a Key Result then its Result Type and Current Value matching the Period for the Key Result will be taken now from a KPI (Indicator) and KPI Measurements.

OKR - Objective Progress based on weighted Key Results

The solution adds Weightage custom filed for Key Result entity, which allows you to determine the importance of each Key Result, as well as affct Objective Progress based on its Weightage.

© Scaled Agile