OKR


Our Purpose - Helping Businesses Succeed With Technology

The biggest problem of the businesses right - They do not have dependable, high-quality software development firms to work with.

Many software development firms are there to do the job, they are not interested in the success of the client. They would take the client on a technology roller coaster, never question the thoughts and just code. These organizations are called ditch diggers, the clients ask them to dig a ditch and they start.

At Knoldus, we would like to change this paradigm by bringing extremely well-engineered systems using functional programming and emerging technologies.


Our North Star - Known as a very well respected organization in emerging technology delivery

How would we achieve this?

  1. Respect comes from our size - our topline, gross margins, EBITDA, number of employees, office locations. We want to study and grow a business like Nagarro with their astute focus on growth.

  2. Respect comes from our internal and external customers - Knolders and our Customers, we need to have high NPS scores on both. We need to exhibit integrity and an ethical quotient. For example, we respect the TATA group more than Reliance

  3. Respect comes from our Technology excellence - We should be at the forefront of technology. We should have high-quality deliverables. We should follow and preach best practices. We should be focused on emerging technologies. We should be showcasing demonstrable growth internally and externally. We want to completely follow the ThoughtWorks way of working here and standing up in the industry as Thought Leaders.

  4. We become known and respected by word of mouth by our customers, the knowledge sharing sessions and activities of our Knolders

Why do we want to do this?

We have never built Knoldus on the foundations of mere profit. Of course, profit is important for any business to run.

Our fundamentals have been that we want to improve the ROI for our customers when they engage with us by

  • Delivering very high-quality software - 70% of the cost of software is in the maintenance cycle of the software

  • Communicating effectively and timely

  • Delivering on commitments - making sure that all our sprint deliverables are on time

We want to turn the software engineers into Software Craftsmen. This is why we focus on knowledge sharing and knowledge learning all the time.

Fundamentals of OKR

The Objective is qualitative, and the KRs (most often three) are quantitative. They are used to focus on a group or individual around a bold goal.

The Objective establishes a goal for a set period of time, usually a quarter.

The Key Results tell you if the Objective has been met by the end of the time.

The objective is a single sentence that is

    • Qualitative (not quantitative) and inspirational

    • Time-bound - for a month or a quarter, if it is for a year, it is a strategy or a mission

    • Actionable by the individual team - it does not involve interdependence with other teams so that it cannot be said that it was not completed because of the other team. There are going to be dependencies but the other team would define their own objectives related to yours.


Key results are what quantify the objective. They measure one of

    1. Growth

    2. Engagement

    3. Revenue

    4. Performance

    5. Quality


For example, Extremely dependable software development partner might have KR's like

    • 80%+ customer retention year on year

    • 8+ recommendation score on NPS (Satisfaction)

    • 1 referral from the client for more business

KR's should have a 50% chance of meeting the goal. The sweet spot is when you have a 50% chance to fail. Anything, not that is sandbagging (which means that the KR is too easy to reach)


OKRs Cascade

The company should set an OKR, and then each department should determine how their OKR leads to the company’s successful OKR.

A team can focus its OKR on a single Key Result or try to support the entire set.

Engineering might decide satisfaction is tightly connected with speed (and they’d be right.) So set an OKR like:

Performance Upon Launch Equivalent to an Established Company

    • 99.8% uptime

    • <1 second response time

    • Instantaneous perceived load time (measure by survey, 90% users say page loaded “immediately”)


Individual OKRs

Each individual should set individual OKRs that reflect both personal growths and support the company’s goals. Individual OKRs are about becoming better at your job, as well as helping your product get better. It’s also not normally a big problem if individual contributors (such as a particular engineer or designer or product manager) were to have a small number of personal growth related Objectives (such as improving their knowledge of a particular technology), just as long as the individual isn’t committing to a burden that will interfere with their ability to contribute their part to their product team, which of course is their primary responsibility.


Defining good KRs

Right KRs

Defining KRs is an art and science. The rule is that when the KRs are done, the Objective should be achieved. If it is not achieved then it means that the KRs were not done right.

The KRs should be having a quantity measure.

Example

Paired KRs

For every KR which has a quantity, pair it with a KR that has quality. For example, doing 10 sales call maybe a KR for growing the business BUT winning 2 deals would be a quality KR along with the first one. Another example, Their paired counterparts should stress the quality of the work. Thus, in accounts payable, the number of vouchers processed should be paired with the number of errors found either by auditing or by our suppliers.

Time-Bound KRs

If every KR defined for your objective has an end date of the end of the quarter then it means that they have not been planned right. Every KR should be planned for completion according to some sprints that you would run. For example, loosely one quarter can be divided into 6 such sprints.

So for a quarter from Jan to Mar some of your KRs should end by Jan 15, others by Jan31, Feb 15, Feb 28, Mar 15, and then Mar 31st.

Break down the completion of all your KRs across the quarter so that you are making solid progress

Less is more


Too many OKRs tend to dilute the focus for a quarter. It is important to put more wood behind fewer arrows. Ideally, at every level, there should not be more than 3 to 5 Objectives defined for the quarter and each Objective should not have more than 3-5 KRs defined that would help in achieving the objective.