The OKR Trap: Why Most Teams Get Them Wrong
(and How to Get Them Right)
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) have become a popular framework for goal setting, promising to bring clarity, focus, and alignment to teams.
Yet, for many, particularly in engineering, OKRs can feel like a redundant exercise, a mere shadow of the existing product roadmap.
Why does this disconnect happen, and how can engineering teams unlock the true potential of OKRs?
The truth is, the effectiveness of OKRs hinges on understanding their purpose: to highlight the extraordinary efforts required for the quarter, not to document the ordinary tasks of your daily work.
The Engineering Conundrum: Roadmap vs. OKRs
Engineering teams often struggle with OKRs because their work is naturally continuous, driven by a well-defined roadmap.
If your OKRs simply state "Release Feature X as planned," you're just stating the obvious. This creates redundancy and can lead to frustration.
Instead, engineering OKRs should focus on the specific challenges or improvements that require extra attention this quarter. Think beyond the roadmap. Ask yourself:
What critical initiative needs a special push this quarter to ensure a smooth launch?
What internal process needs to be improved to boost efficiency or collaboration?
What new technology or skill needs to be onboarded to support future development?
Examples of Effective Engineering OKRs:
Objective: Ensure a flawless launch of Feature X.
Key Result 1: Achieve 99.99% uptime for Feature X in the first month post-launch.
Key Result 2: Reduce customer support tickets related to Feature X by 50% compared to previous feature launches.
Key Result 3: Onboard 3 new engineers to the on-call rotation for Feature X.
Objective: Enhance team responsiveness to production issues.
Key Result 1: Reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) for critical incidents by 20%.
Key Result 2: Implement automated alerts for 90% of critical performance indicators.
Notice how these OKRs focus on improvement and special initiatives, not simply executing the existing roadmap. Your roadmap is tracked through KPIs like SLOs and deployment frequency.
OKRs are about identifying the critical few areas that require special attention, effort, and resources this quarter to drive significant improvement and change.
For e.g. My Q1 2025 OKRs are
Objective: Validate the core hypothesis of Feature X through initial experimentation.
Key Result 1: Increase development velocity by 30% by successfully integrating 5 new engineers into the Feature X team, measured by story points completed per sprint.
Key Result 2: Achieve 99.9% uptime for all critical infrastructure components required for Feature X during the E2E demo and subsequent testing phase.
Key Result 3: Secure written sign-off from leads on the documented experiment plan, staff plan, including success criteria, metrics, and resource allocation, by Feb.
Key Result 4: Collect data on [specific metric 1], [specific metric 2], and [specific metric 3] from at least x% traffic during the initial experiment.
Key Result 5: Generate a comprehensive report summarizing the findings of the initial experiment, including key learnings, data analysis, and recommendations for next steps, by [specific date].