Portfolios OKRs: Understand the basics

Portfolios OKRs adoption pathway

1. Understand the basics

4. Gain insights with reports and outputs

Audience	PMO, Planview administrator, portfolio manager, program manager, product manager, project manager, team member
Objective	Gain a foundational understanding of objectives and key results in Planview Portfolios.

Introduction to OKRs

Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, are an outcome-driven framework that creates alignment and engagement around measurable goals. OKRs are adopted by organizations that want to define key organizational goals and track progress toward achieving them. The biggest impact on organizations as a result of implementing OKRs is a cultural shift from outputs to outcomes. Instead of solely tracking tasks or projects, OKRs emphasize achieving outcomes that align with strategic priorities. By using OKRs, organizations can easily see which work directly contributes to key objectives, making it easier to prioritize efforts that drive real impact.

OKRs help answer two questions:

Where do we want to go?

How will we measure our efforts to get there?

Objectives can be thought of as goals, or what is to be achieved. They help align organizations and teams around a unified vision and lead to clear execution. Key results are how organizations measure their progress against their objectives. Key results lay out specific and actionable requirements to be completed so that teams know when they’re making progress.

Objectives should be...	Key results should be...
Ambitious: big-pictured and aspirational	Measurable: able to be quantified
Qualitative: able to be verbally defined in concrete terms	Specific: easily understandable and clearly defined
Actionable: able to be implemented in current conditions	Time-bound: defined by a realistic timeline
Time-bound: a timeline should be defined in the objective itself	Verifiable: able to be definitively confirmed (teams must be able to answer the question: “Did we achieve this key result?”)

OKRs are used to set strategic objectives upfront and are hierarchically cascaded across the organization to establish clear ownership to drive results. Defining and aligning around OKRs helps link organizational and team goals to measurable outcomes.

By adopting OKRs, your organization can better:

Align team members to big-picture goals

Improve productivity by focusing efforts across the organization

Provide actionable structure for measurement, accountability, and transparency

Boost employee engagement through goal setting

Increase insight and transparency for executives

Improve resource allocation and management

Measure business outcome versus simply measuring output

Planview OKR Maturity Model

This Planview OKR Maturity Model helps you understand your maturity stage based on OKR usage within your organization.

Stage 1	Success is measured only in traditional project-based metrics around outputs (for example, on time or on budget).	In this stage, the customer is measuring success using traditional project-based metrics, but this has little to do with achieving business outcomes. For example, let’s say an organization is creating a mobile application. Even if the project is in scope, on time, and on budget, if no one buys the app, the organization hasn’t achieved their business outcome.
Stage 2	Product areas have begun incorporating business outcome-driven key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the value of products.	In this stage, product areas are using KPIs to measure how their product is performing over time (for example, measuring adoption or active license count). However, they are not yet defining outcomes and driving their work based on strategy.
Stage 3	Product areas have begun using OKRs to develop strategy and measure achieved business outcomes.	In this stage, product areas have started using OKRs to drive enterprise planning and strategy. For example, product areas might set a goal of increasing their active license count, then work to figure out what to do to achieve that objective.
Stage 4	Product areas have built OKRs into their operating model and are using it to drive work, funding, and prioritization.	In this stage, product areas have a defined product operating model where OKRs are an integral part of that operating model.
Stage 5	The entire enterprise has adopted OKRs to drive decision making and is cascading the defined objectives to align goals across the enterprise.	In this stage, leadership is defining OKRs to drive decision making and is cascading it down.

The following image is an example of how customers can adopt OKRs in the context of their wider organizational operating model. This shows how OKRs are used to set strategic objectives upfront and are hierarchically cascaded across the organization to establish clear ownership to drive results.

Screenshot 2024-08-06 at 3.04.29 PM.png

Benefits of using OKRs

Why implement OKRs? OKRs help drive:

Organizational clarity

Defining OKRs creates organizational clarity by enabling organizations to answer the questions “Where do we want to go?” (objectives) and “How will we measure our efforts to get there?” (key results).

Focus

By setting clear objectives and measurable key results, OKRs help organizations prioritize their efforts on initiatives that achieve the most important outcomes.

Transparency

OKRs promote transparency by making goals and progress visible to everyone in the organization. This gives the organization insight into achieved outcomes alongside traditional metrics that focus on output (for example, on-time or on-budget).

Alignment

OKRs can be created at different levels of an organizational structure, such as enterprise, product, or team levels. Cascading OKRs across the enterprise ensures everyone is working toward the same strategic priorities.

Accountability

OKRs help establish accountability, as everyone understands their role in achieving the organization's outcomes. It also means organizations don't have to rely on overly complex governance processes to establish accountability, which allows teams to deliver value faster.

Examples of OKRs

Here are some examples of different types of OKRs you might encounter in your organization:

Company OKR Example #1: Increase retention rates

The VP of Marketing at Company X knows that figuring out what increases retention – and what causes customers to churn – will be critical as Company X grows.

Objective: Increase retention and reduce churn over the next year.
- Key result 1: Increase customer retention rate by 10%
  - Track and measure the percentage of customers who continue to use the product or service over the year, aiming for a 10% increase in retention compared to the previous year.
- Key result 2: Reduce customer churn rate by 15%
  - Measure the percentage of customers who stop using the product or service over the year. Aim to decrease this number by 15% compared to the previous year.
- Key result 3: Achieve a net promoter score (NPS) of 50 or higher
  - Focus on improving customer satisfaction and loyalty by enhancing the overall customer experience. Conduct regular NPS surveys and target a score of 50 or above, indicating a higher likelihood of customer retention and word-of-mouth promotion.

Activities can then be associated to these key results. For example, an activity could be “implement generative AI capabilities to drive greater customer satisfaction”.

IT OKR Example #2: Improve security

The CTO of an online lesson planning tool that has surged in popularity is committed to making sure the tool is reliable, secure, and actively evolving to meet the needs of their customers.

Objective: Make the platform the most secure online lesson planning tool on the market.
- Key result 1: Achieve a 30% increase in customer trust and confidence scores
  - Conduct regular customer surveys to measure trust and confidence in the platform's security. Target a 30% increase in these scores over the next year, indicating that users feel safer using the platform.
- Key result 2: Increase the number of new customer sign-ups by 20% due to security features
  - Track and attribute new customer acquisitions specifically to the platform’s enhanced security features. Aim for a 20% increase in new customer sign-ups over the next year as a direct result of the platform's security improvements.
- Key result 3: Achieve a 95% customer retention rate among users citing security as a key
  - Focus on retaining existing customers who have highlighted security as a primary concern. Measure the retention rate among this customer segment and aim to keep it at or above 95%, showing that the security enhancements are meeting customer needs.

Product OKR Example #3: Launch paid version of app

The head of product for an app that educates and guides new parents through their babies’ early childhood has big plans for the app in the next few years, including launching a paid version of their product.

Objective: Launch paid version of the app’s core product.
- Key result 1: Achieve $500,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) within six months of launch
  - Track revenue generated from paid subscriptions and aim to reach half a million dollars in MRR within the first six months after launching the paid version of the app.
- Key result 2: Reach 50,000 paid subscribers within the first year
  - Monitor the number of users who convert from free to paid subscriptions and set a goal to acquire 50,000 paid subscribers within the first 12 months of the launch.
- Key result 3: Achieve a customer satisfaction score of 85% or higher among paid users
  - Conduct regular surveys to gauge satisfaction among users who have subscribed to the paid version. Aim for a satisfaction score of 85% or higher, ensuring that paid users are happy with the value provided by the app.

Review more examples of real-world OKRs here.

How to write OKRs

OKRs must be effective to help your organization reach its strategic goals. Therefore, it’s important to master writing OKRs. For OKRs to be effective, they should meet four criteria:

Measurable	OKRs should be able to be measured in a standardized way.
Challenging	Aim for OKRs to be big, ambitious goals for your organization, rather than routine tasks you know you can accomplish.
Clear	Successful OKRs should be concise and easily understandable.
Consistently reviewed	OKRs are most effective when they are used before, during, and after an initiative or project to maintain alignment and focus.

A helpful way to begin writing OKRs is to think about it based on this formula:

We will __(Objective)__ as measured by __ (these Key Results).

Plug in your objective and key results to ensure you have a strong OKR. For example:

We will design a UX so intuitive that customer service inquiries will be rare in six months, as measured by:

Key Result 1: UX design matches 100% of customer requirements

Key Result 2: Fewer than 1 UX-related customer service inquiry per week

Key Result 3: Scale infrastructure to support 100,000 users by end of quarter

When writing key results, make sure you are not confusing activities as key results. For example, “train 100% of the organization on phishing” can be written more effectively as “reduce the number of organizational phishing test failures by 50%”. The first is an activity that will lead us to achieving the outcome of reducing phishing test failures.

Visit here for more tips and best practices on writing OKRs.

OKR levels

OKR levels allow you to track OKRs that are connected across organizational structures. Typically, OKRs have an enterprise or corporate level at the top and team-level OKRs at the bottom with various levels in between. Having multi-leveled OKRs allows for bidirectional goal alignment.

By default, there are four OKR levels: Enterprise, Portfolio, Program, and Team.

Custom attributes

Planview OKRs can include custom attributes, which are options with customized values that can help you capture and track more specific data that matches your organization's needs.

For example, if you want to track how critical the need for an OKR is, you can use a custom attribute called OKR Priority with values of Must Have, Nice to Have, and Time Permitting, which can help you prioritize OKR work.

Each environment can have ten custom attributes, in addition to the two default attributes already included. Each custom attribute can be a text field, a numeric field, a date, or a list of options (single-select or multi-select).

Overview of OKRs in Planview Portfolios

You can implement OKRs in Planview Portfolios by performing the following tasks:

Define objectives to capture and track progress toward high-level goals.

Define the key results that will capture and track progress toward different elements of your objectives.

Review the progress and adjust ongoing or future work as necessary.

You can view, create, and manage OKRs on the Objectives and Key Results screen in Portfolios.

To learn more about OKRs in Planview Portfolios:

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)