Key Results and Strategic Goals for Engineering Teams

My Infra team cares about stability. My Feature team cares about speed. If I judge them both by the same “Success Template,” I am failing as a manager. As an Engineering Manager, I oversee multiple teams every day. The standard of work is the same for all of them. The metrics are not, because standardised process ≠ standardised success. Here is how I think about it. Infra teams live in the world of uptime, latency, and throughput. If the platform stays up during traffic spikes, if p95 stays where it should, and if incidents are rare and well handled, they are succeeding. Shipping shiny new things is nice, but it is not the core scoreboard. Feature teams live in the world of users and learning. Their success is adoption, retention, NPS, iteration speed, and the quality of product decisions. If they ship a stable feature that nobody uses, that is not success. Their metric is behaviour change. Platform teams sit in between. Their work shows up in internal developer experience. Build times, onboarding time, test reliability, and how quickly a new engineer can ship something safely. If everyone moves faster and breaks less, they are winning. If I measure all three only by “number of tickets closed” or “story points,” I push them into the wrong behaviour. – Infra starts rushing risky changes. – Feature teams stop talking to users and chase internal OKRs. – Platform teams ship tools nobody adopts. The pilot gets the credit for the smooth landing, but the mechanic keeps the plane from falling out of the sky. If you judge the mechanic by “passenger satisfaction,” you are looking at the wrong data. Good engineering leadership sets a consistent bar for quality and ownership, then provides each team with a scoreboard that accurately reflects the work they are actually doing. If your teams feel like they are working hard and still “losing,” it is worth asking whether the metrics are wrong, not just the people.

How we turned an aspirational OKR into a realistic set of goals. On Q3 2024 we started working with a software development team already familiar with OKRs with quite an aspirational set of goals. One of their KR was “Increase monthly active user retention by 15%.” While ambitious and user-impact-driven, this outcome metric was challenging to translate into immediate actions for the technical team. Hint: user retention is a lagging indicator. The solution was breaking this KR into more specific KRs reflecting user behavior changes. We did it by splitting KR levels (product + team) and aligning at the KR level (rather than cascading). The result was: - “Increase the percentage of users completing successful onboarding from 70% to 85%.” - “Increase Activation Rate from 65% to 75% during the first two weeks of use.” These KRs provided clear, actionable focus areas, enabling the team to identify where to improve the user experience. Additionally, KPIs were set to track short-term indicators, like average response time to onboarding-related issues, helping monitor progress in real time. This approach allowed the team to work toward the aspirational goal while staying motivated by seeing tangible improvements for users and the business. Would that work for your teams too? #ProductManagement #ProductStrategy #OKR #ObjectivesAndKeyResults

𝗕𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗛𝗶𝗴𝗵-𝗣𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 - 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗺. Ever seen a team grind all month, only to realize they weren’t even aiming at the same target? I have - and it wasn’t pretty. I learned the hard way that vague goals and fuzzy direction don’t just cause confusion… They erode trust, momentum, and morale. About ten years ago, I walked into a daily production meeting and realized something unsettling: Everyone had their own idea of what "success" looked like. One team was focused on speed. Another was chasing quality metrics. Leadership wanted cost savings. They were all working hard - but pulling in different directions. So, we implemented OKRs. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝗻: Most teams don’t fail because of lack of effort. They fail because of lack of clarity. → Misaligned priorities between leadership and production → Unclear expectations that lead to frustration → No clear way to measure progress → Weekly wins that don’t ladder up to quarterly goals Without clarity, even the best teams stall out. 𝗖𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲: The root of the problem wasn’t people. It was structure. And more importantly - communication. → Goals weren’t written down - just discussed → Metrics weren’t time-bound or tracked → Teams weren’t involved in setting the objectives → Results didn’t roll up to strategic priorities People want to perform - but they need alignment, visibility, and ownership. 𝗖𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲: That’s where OKRs changed the game for us. → We set quarterly Objectives with clear intent: ambitious but grounded → We built 3-5 measurable Key Results for each Objective → We held weekly standups to review progress and unblock issues → We made OKRs visible across teams to promote accountability Suddenly, conversations shifted from "What are we doing?" To "How are we tracking?" 𝗕𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗳𝗶𝘁𝘀: After six months, the shift was clear. → 19% reduction in downtime due to aligned priorities → 12% boost in cycle time improvement → Engagement scores improved by 24% - because people felt involved → Our culture became more intentional, more accountable, and more focused You don’t need more effort. You need more direction. "Alignment isn’t about getting everyone to agree - it’s about giving everyone a reason to move in the same direction." 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗢𝗞𝗥 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺? 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗮 𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴? Wishing you a focused, energizing, and impactful Monday ahead. #LeadershipDevelopment #ManufacturingExcellence #OKRs #Accountability #TeamAlignment

I might sound controversial but I often see ENGINEERING teams rewarded for throughput while the business pays the cost in churn, wasted infrastructure, and missed product-market fit ⚠️ If your releases are frequent but your KPIs do not move, the problem is not velocity. The problem is alignment, measurement, and feedback. (SAVE THIS POST FOR LATER) 📌 Here’s what typically fails in fast teams, in technical terms: • Misalignment at peak. Teams optimize for closed tickets and velocity metrics instead of leading indicators like activation, time-to-first-value, and task completion rate. • No hypothesis-driven work. Features are shipped as solutions to assumptions, not experiments that test falsifiable hypotheses. • Poor observability. Releases are blind because telemetry lacks business-context signals. Traces and logs exist, but event schemas that map to user intent do not. • Weak release control. No feature flags, canaries, or rollback strategy, so bad ideas propagate quickly, and recovery costs escalate. • Architecture that prioritizes features over flows. Overly chatty APIs, synchronous blocking paths, and brittle data models make small changes risky. If you want real outcomes, treat your delivery pipeline like a scientific lab 🧪 ⚡ Here is an operational playbook that converts velocity into impact: - Align outcomes to a single north star and 2–3 leading indicators. - Translate OKRs into event-level telemetry you can query in real time. - Define expected metric delta, sample size, and rollback criteria before code is written. - Use structured events, OpenTelemetry tracing, and product analytics (Amplitude, Mixpanel) with event names that map to user intent. - Use feature flags, canary releases, and automated rollbacks so you can validate in production safely. ⚙️ Tools: LaunchDarkly, Flagger, or homegrown flagging backed by robust metrics. When engineering decisions are explicitly tied to business hypotheses and telemetry, shipping becomes learning. You stop paying for churn and start investing in compoundable product improvements. ✅ Repost this post with your network to help them improve business outcomes and focus on the things that matters.

Many teams overcomplicate OKRs. They turn them into checklists or SMART goals instead of what they’re meant to be: a rallying cry for the work that matters most. Here’s a simple way to frame them. ----------------------------------- ⑴ Objective = Why It Matters An Objective should feel like a reason to get out of bed. It’s the why behind the work; something people want to chase. Examples: ➡️ Deliver an online experience musicians love to use every day. ➡️ Make our product the simplest way to accomplish this job, anywhere. ⑵ Key Results = How We’ll Know We Did It Key Results turn purpose into evidence. They answer: “How will we know we succeeded?” Writing them in the past tense helps teams see the finish line: “We knew we succeeded when…” Examples: ➡️ Engagement increased by 30% ➡️ Time-to-value improved by 40%. ➡️ Our experience earned a 4.8 satisfaction score. ➡️ Renewal rates climbed to 90%+. ⑶ Initiatives = How We’ll Get There This is the part many teams skip, maybe because it’s not in the acronym. Initiatives are the actual work; the projects and experiments that drive the Key Results. Examples: ➡️ Simplify the onboarding flow. ➡️ Run customer listening sessions across priority segments. ➡️ Automate the high-friction parts of the workflow. ➡️ Build targeted learning guides for key use cases. Initiatives can evolve as you learn. Key Results shouldn’t. ⑷ Putting It on One Page Objective: Deliver an online experience musicians love to use every day. Key Results : ➡️ Daily use increased by 25%. ➡️ Satisfaction scores reached 4.7. ➡️ Support tickets fell by 30%. Initiatives: ➡️ Reworked onboarding ➡️ Added guided walkthroughs ➡️ Built a customer insights dashboard ➡️ Now the story fits on one page: the purpose, the evidence, and the work. Common Traps -------------------- ➡️ Turning Objectives into a to-do list: Objectives = outcomes; tasks live in Initiatives. ➡️ Mixing up KPIs and Key Results: KPIs measure; KRs commit to change targets. Creating “everything goals”: More than 3–4 OKRs = no priorities. ➡️ Objectives that sound like tasks: “Ship version 3.2” is an initiative. Bottom line: ------------- OKRs are a communication tool. They are a way to align people around the work that matters and remind them why the work exists in the first place. #OKRs #execution #communication #goals ---- If this resonates, I go deeper on clarity, communication, and execution in my upcoming book "The Strategy Trap," coming February 3. For weekly tools and insights like this, please subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gNMcy3DK