Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a technique to set targets (objectives) and achieve results in a team environment, introduced by Larry Page at Intel and used by Google, LinkedIn, Uber and many more.
Can you share your experience and key lessons learned? Saving Changes...
Everyone in the Federal Government of Canada receives what is called a Public Service Personal Agreement (PSPA). Amongst other things, it lists core expected behaviors, and supervisors can add work objectives. Nowadays all personal work objectives must be linked to the overall objectives of the department. The guiding policy document for our department (National Defence) is Strong, Secure, Engaged (SSE). I've added a link below and encourage people to check it out. It is a very comprehensive document that is really well done in my opinion.
Many of our personal work objectives are linked to the following overall department objective below:
Grow and professionalize the defence procurement workforce in order to strengthen the capacity to manage the acquisition and support of today’s complex military capabilities. This includes the addition of new procurement specialists and enhanced training and professional accreditation for defence procurement personnel.
For example, in my case, one of my personal work objectives is to provide "X" workshops and "knowledge transfer sessions" to staff on project related topics.
Hi Thomas,
I've used OKRs at a portfolio level and I have found that they are great to focus people on the purpose and objectives of the portfolio, rather than simply viewing the portfolio as a collection of projects that have to be delivered in line with their respective constraints.
I'd like to offer up the following takeaways:
1) Switching to an OKR driven portfolio approach takes time. It is a system, like agile, that can be described as ‘deceptively easy’. The concept is simple, but it can take four or five quarters to implement and bed in.
2) Data must flow two-ways. You may have a PMO in your organization who are used to gathering information from project teams and sharing this with the business. With an OKR driven portfolio, we expect teams to track progress against KRs, which means information needs to flow in the opposite direction too. For your portfolio team to turn dials, they need to have fast feedback loops so they can see business metrics changing as project teams deliver. Challenge your PMO to think about how they can deliver information into teams, to drive effective decision making within projects.
3) Encourage thin-slice delivery approaches. When you adopt OKRs, you should be able to see the numbers against your KRs steadily rising throughout the cycle. If your projects only deliver at the end of a period (or beyond), then you risk numbers staying flat. This is can sap energy and belief in the system. Challenge your teams to adopt more incremental delivery approaches that see small packets of value being delivered frequently. This will allow everyone to see how their efforts are affecting the portfolio OKRs in real-time.
4) You won’t always hit your goals – and that’s okay. One of your big challenges will be mindset. People are reluctant to commit to objectives when there is a risk that they will not achieve them fully. Maybe they have been penalized for this in the past. As a portfolio manager, you will need to work closely with the leadership team to promote a culture where it is safe to take such risks and it is okay not to hit moon-shots all the time. With OKRs we know that hitting our 1.0 targets on every KR may be almost impossible, but we know that striving for our audacious objectives will drive us further forwards than conservative and safe goals ever will.
If you want to explore deeper, you can explore the article I wrote about my portfolio management OKR journey here: https://www.hotpmo.com/blog/a-journey-through-okr
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2 replies by Thomas Walenta and ZHOU WEIBIN
Jul 25, 2020 4:57 AM
ZHOU WEIBIN
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Him John, great to learn your opinion. I am trying to digest the info from your blog... That help me to understand and try to set up a link inner PMO and out of it. Thank you!
Jul 25, 2020 6:34 AM
Thomas Walenta
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John,
sorry for my delay in replying.
You give a great advice, thanks a lot.
Thomas
Saving Changes...
ZHOU WEIBINBeijing, China, [ Choose One ], Hong Kong
Jan 03, 2020 12:02 PM
Replying to John McIntyre
...
Hi Thomas,
I've used OKRs at a portfolio level and I have found that they are great to focus people on the purpose and objectives of the portfolio, rather than simply viewing the portfolio as a collection of projects that have to be delivered in line with their respective constraints.
I'd like to offer up the following takeaways:
1) Switching to an OKR driven portfolio approach takes time. It is a system, like agile, that can be described as ‘deceptively easy’. The concept is simple, but it can take four or five quarters to implement and bed in.
2) Data must flow two-ways. You may have a PMO in your organization who are used to gathering information from project teams and sharing this with the business. With an OKR driven portfolio, we expect teams to track progress against KRs, which means information needs to flow in the opposite direction too. For your portfolio team to turn dials, they need to have fast feedback loops so they can see business metrics changing as project teams deliver. Challenge your PMO to think about how they can deliver information into teams, to drive effective decision making within projects.
3) Encourage thin-slice delivery approaches. When you adopt OKRs, you should be able to see the numbers against your KRs steadily rising throughout the cycle. If your projects only deliver at the end of a period (or beyond), then you risk numbers staying flat. This is can sap energy and belief in the system. Challenge your teams to adopt more incremental delivery approaches that see small packets of value being delivered frequently. This will allow everyone to see how their efforts are affecting the portfolio OKRs in real-time.
4) You won’t always hit your goals – and that’s okay. One of your big challenges will be mindset. People are reluctant to commit to objectives when there is a risk that they will not achieve them fully. Maybe they have been penalized for this in the past. As a portfolio manager, you will need to work closely with the leadership team to promote a culture where it is safe to take such risks and it is okay not to hit moon-shots all the time. With OKRs we know that hitting our 1.0 targets on every KR may be almost impossible, but we know that striving for our audacious objectives will drive us further forwards than conservative and safe goals ever will.
If you want to explore deeper, you can explore the article I wrote about my portfolio management OKR journey here: https://www.hotpmo.com/blog/a-journey-through-okr
Him John, great to learn your opinion. I am trying to digest the info from your blog... That help me to understand and try to set up a link inner PMO and out of it. Thank you! Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Jan 03, 2020 12:02 PM
Replying to John McIntyre
...
Hi Thomas,
I've used OKRs at a portfolio level and I have found that they are great to focus people on the purpose and objectives of the portfolio, rather than simply viewing the portfolio as a collection of projects that have to be delivered in line with their respective constraints.
I'd like to offer up the following takeaways:
1) Switching to an OKR driven portfolio approach takes time. It is a system, like agile, that can be described as ‘deceptively easy’. The concept is simple, but it can take four or five quarters to implement and bed in.
2) Data must flow two-ways. You may have a PMO in your organization who are used to gathering information from project teams and sharing this with the business. With an OKR driven portfolio, we expect teams to track progress against KRs, which means information needs to flow in the opposite direction too. For your portfolio team to turn dials, they need to have fast feedback loops so they can see business metrics changing as project teams deliver. Challenge your PMO to think about how they can deliver information into teams, to drive effective decision making within projects.
3) Encourage thin-slice delivery approaches. When you adopt OKRs, you should be able to see the numbers against your KRs steadily rising throughout the cycle. If your projects only deliver at the end of a period (or beyond), then you risk numbers staying flat. This is can sap energy and belief in the system. Challenge your teams to adopt more incremental delivery approaches that see small packets of value being delivered frequently. This will allow everyone to see how their efforts are affecting the portfolio OKRs in real-time.
4) You won’t always hit your goals – and that’s okay. One of your big challenges will be mindset. People are reluctant to commit to objectives when there is a risk that they will not achieve them fully. Maybe they have been penalized for this in the past. As a portfolio manager, you will need to work closely with the leadership team to promote a culture where it is safe to take such risks and it is okay not to hit moon-shots all the time. With OKRs we know that hitting our 1.0 targets on every KR may be almost impossible, but we know that striving for our audacious objectives will drive us further forwards than conservative and safe goals ever will.
If you want to explore deeper, you can explore the article I wrote about my portfolio management OKR journey here: https://www.hotpmo.com/blog/a-journey-through-okr
John,
sorry for my delay in replying.
You give a great advice, thanks a lot.
Thomas Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
OKR´s are using by most organizations as a new buzzword and sometimes to demonstrate they have changed their way of thinking. I am not against the use of it (in fact I am in the final step to implement it in my actual organization). What OKRs made in most of the cases is adding abstraction and ambiguity to "traditional" ways to measure performance. So, the basic is people has to take into account that SMART principle still is needed in those cases where OKRs implies it will be used to measure performance. Saving Changes...
