Good or bad OKR?

OKRs
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1

What do you think of this OKR?

Objective: High product adoption of VWX
Key results:

  1. VWX achieves 10,000 monthly active users (MAU) by June 30 (end of quarter)
  2. VWX achieves average engagement session length of greater than 1 minute over a minimum an engaged audience of 3000
  3. VWX achieves stickiness of more than 50% by June 30 (average Daily/Monthly active users)

So, whats so wrong with this OKR?

It has a clear, non-quantified, objective
The key results all have numbers (so they are analogue) and a deadline (stated or implied).
The key results seem like things you would want and seem to measure a high product adoption.

That is all good, so what is the problem?

I could quibble about measuring key result #1 on at the quarter end. If the team are working hard to deliver this their good work may not have had time to play out. They may finish work on June 30 but it might take weeks for the world to notice and active users to increase.

But actually, there is a bigger problem.

The problem is less about the wording of the OKR but the destination: this was an OKR given to a development team. Coders, Testers and maybe Analysts were supposed to make this OKR happen.

The implication is that the technical staff can exercise control over user behaviour. That suggest the company believes that product quality alone drives usage. Is that a fair assumption to make?

Maybe, I’d like to see some evidence.
However, on the whole I think not. A well placed advertising campaign might do more to boost user figures than some new feature.

Or look at engagement, I’m not sure what this product was doing but 1 minute of usage might imply that they product was slow, the user might be waiting for a status update. It might even be slow because many other users were using it.

2

Sorry about the potentially dumb questoin but .

What user behaviors or outcomes would prove the product is delivering real value? And do product teams ever create OKRs on behalf of customers :thinking:

3

In general I don’t think these measures are bad. I don’t know the product in detail so I’m not sure, but perhaps something like “10% increase in sales” would be an improvement. But still, measuring active users and time on the site are pretty good proxies.

My main problem with this OKR is that it is not deliverable by a technical team. Delivering this OKR might require technical changes but it also requires product management and, probably, product marketing.

For a technical team I’d want to tighten the ask up a bit, focus the what on something more specific, perhaps talk about “capacity to handle” the desired users.

Or, change the team composition and add the capabilities to really achieve this.

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