Basic concepts of Objectives & Key results

OKRs - Objectives & key results

Objectives & Key Results is a goal setting methodology, popularized by its incredible success at Google & Intel. UpRaise makes use of this philosophy and helps teams set goals within Jira. 

Difference between an objective & a key result

Most of the  OKR software available treat objective and key results the same way. UpRaise treats them a little differently from each other. Key results are sort of unit building blocks, they cannot be further distributed to multiple people neither they can receive a contribution from another objective. Whereas objectives are at a higher level than key results and can be easily further distributed into multiple key results as well as contributing objectives. 

Objective cycle

Objective cycles act as containers for all levels of OKRs. We recommend quarterly objective cycle cadence for best results. Start & end dates of the objective cycle, along with the additional settings dictate behavior of objective/s that belong to the corresponding objective cycle.

At the time of installation, system automatically creates some default objective cycles, you can, of course, edit or delete them to set them as per your requirements. 

OKR levels

Objectives & key results exist at different levels in UpRaise - Company, team & Individual. Depending on the org structure team OKRs can assume different levels such as Department OKRs, Division OKRs, Team OKRs etc. 

Punch ins

Punch in is an action through which an objective or key result makes progress. When there are no key results & contributing objectives for an objective, it can be punched indirectly. Whereas, if there are key results and/or contributing objectives the objective's progress is linked with KR’s & Alignment’s progress & cannot be independently updated (unless all linkages carry 0 weightage).

Weightage

Weightage is a number associated with a link (either key result/objective or an objective/objective). It determines the magnitude of impact the association is going to have on the progress of objective that is at a higher level. 

For example, if Objective B is contributing to Objective A and weightage of this alignment is 0 - in that case the progress on Objective B wouldn't impact progress on Objective A.

Grading

On reaching due date, objectives & key results become eligible to be graded. Grading gives you the ability to rate efforts on a specific objective/key result. OKR framework suggests that a grade/assessment at the objective level should be an average of grades on all associated key results. 

Labels

UpRaise allows associating multiple labels against each of the objectives. The purpose of objective labels is to allow classification of objectives into multiple different categories. This lets teams analyze progress and overall effort based on various categories.

For example, stretch & operational labels can help companies categorize objectives according to their nature. Note that one objective can be associated with one or more labels.

Alignment

Alignment is of vital importance in OKRs. By creating alignments amongst different levels of objectives, one can ensure better visibility and automatic progress roll up from the lowest level to the highest. 

Important to note that UpRaise does not restrict alignment to match with the org structure. Which means X's objective can be aligned with Y's even if they are not on the same team. As long as the aligned objectives do not create a circular relationship, the alignments are valid.