Once you have run a retrospective on the current period the next step is to plan the OKRs for the upcoming period.
As part of the planning your OKRs the upcoming period, we suggest you do it in conjunction with reviewing and updating your Game Plan.
Game Plans are a great way in teams and functions as well as at an organizational level to structure and activate your strategy.
OKR Planning and alignment
Why?
- To help structure your thinking around planning and aligning your OKRs for the upcoming period.
- Dependant on your organization preference, you can create Bottom Up OKRs, Top Down OKRs and OKRs which are negotiated within teams.
When?
- After a team retrospective where you will have reviewed the current OKRs and discussed the learnings.
How to create Bottom Up OKRs?
Firstly, in your team, consider the questions below and then clarify and capture the outcomes of your team discussions.
What to consider when planning for the future period:
- What are our organization annual OKRs?
- How can we contribute to these annual OKRs in coming period?
- How can we measure the outcome of our contribution?
- Who will own and contribute to this?
- What are the leadership team OKRs for the coming period?
-
- How can we contribute to these OKRs in the coming period?
- How can we measure the outcome of our contribution?
- Who will own and contribute to this?
- Which teams do we work closest with?
- What are the OKRs that other teams are working on for the following period that we can align with?
Team Negotiated OKRs
These OKRs are ones which are derived from your team priorities and decided within the team.
How?
The process of creating these OKRs is one of negotiation in the team and follows a similar, but slightly different pattern to Bottom Up OKRs.
Consider the following 6 questions:
1. What are our team top 3 or 4 priorities for this period?
2. How specifically can we contribute to achieving our team priorities this period? (The Objective)
3. How can we measure the outcome of our contribution in this period? (The Key Results)
4. Can we align our Objective with an Objective from another team?
5. Who will own the Key Result? (Is the best person to own the Key Result from another team?)
6. Who will contribute to the Key Result?
OKRs & Game Plans
OKRs are an integral part of Game Plans and should be visible for everyone to see. It is easy to add OKRs as a widget to your team Game Plan page, see How do I create a Game Plan in TG
In addition to OKRs, two of the other key components of Game Plans are Methods and Interlocks.
Both of these components enable you as a team to consider how specifically you will achieve your new Objectives, identifying any interlocks which may occur as well as how you may overcome them.