A high level overview to what the annual OKR planning process could look like.
How to plan your OKRs throughout the year.
Generally your organization will have long term and short term cadences into which you fit your planning.
At the start of the year there is long term planning for the entire year. The OKRs derived for the long term are valuable in a number of ways as they help provide the ‘guiding star’ for the year outlining the organization direction and help the leadership team form their short term OKRs. The 'guiding star' enable teams and individuals to plan and align their OKRs.
At the end of the year you should run a retrospective for the annual organization OKRs to gauge progress and success. The outcome of this will feed into the long term planning for the upcoming year.
Period - The timeframe for which an Objective is set.
Strategic objectives - Usually set annually (Long term).
Tactical/Operational objectives - Set over the short term, often this is quarterly.
Annual Timeline
The Vison & Strategic goals will planned often for a 2,3 or 5 year cadence.
Long Term Yearly Plan is as it suggests for the year.
The vision and strategic goals are useful information to share via the Context Sharing Page. The long term yearly plan in the form of OKRs will be visible to everyone when they view the company level OKRs.
Teams will share how they will execute on their part of the organization strategy through their Game Plan.
Now let’s break this down and look at what happens during one short term period - Q1.
Q1 Timeline
Short Term Planning & Implementation
Start with the Q1 planning:
- Run your Game Plan workshop and create OKRs for the period using your choice of Top Down & Bottom Up OKRs.
- These will be tactical/operational OKRs for teams and individuals
Each team runs weekly or bi-weekly check ins (click here for some tips):
- This is to encourage teams to share progress on their OKRs and update if there are any hiccups or if ask if help is needed.
Finish with the Q1 Retrospective (click here for some tips):
- At the end of the quarter each team will run a retrospective to review progress and success of the OKRs from that period.
- After the retrospective each team will use the learnings and insights gained to inform the Game Plan for the upcoming period and plan the OKRs .