Product OKRs: Everything Product Teams Should Know

Product OKRs guide product teams to user impact using a goal-setting framework pairing an inspirational outcome (objective) with 3-5 measurable metrics (key results).

Focus Areas for Product OKRs

There are six main focus areas when determining what product OKRs to prioritize:

1. Product launch to ensure products and features align with the market.  

2. User research to ground improvements in customer data points before engineers make physical changes.  

3. Development and design to focus on efficiency, quality, and speed improvements during production.

4. Release management to allow feature completion to reach customers on time

5. Engagement and customer success metrics to show a product provides genuine value.

6. Operations and enablement focus on team capabilities and processes, resulting in higher product performance over time.

Examples of Product OKRs

See these 20 examples of product OKRs to understand what we mean:

1. Product Launch

   1. Objective: Launch the next major platform release 

      1. Key Result: Complete 50 customer development interviews

      2. Key Result: Review 10 customer requirements

      3. Key Result: Complete 50 successful beta tests.

      4. Key Result: Conduct 4 training sessions

   2. Objective: Develop a validated product vision 

      1. Key Result: Build 5 UX improvements

      2. Key Result: Complete 60 customer interviews

      3. Key Result: Increase MAU by 20%

2. User Research

   1. Objective: Establish product-market fit 

      1. Key Result: Use a design sprint to generate and validate a core solution

      2. Key Result: Complete 20 interviews with enterprise buyers.

      3. Key Result: Validate new design patterns with 20 customers

   2. Objective: Embed user testing into product development 

      1. Key Result: Run 20 live usability testing interviews

      2. Key Result: Do 12 recorded user interviews

      3. Key Result: Integrate user testing requirements in a pre-launch checklist.

3. Development and Design

   1. Objective: Increase feature delivery speed

      1. Key Result: Improve sprint team velocity from 27 to 38 story points

      2. Key Result: Reduce bugs per feature from 1.4 to 0.7

      3. Key Result: Reduce average lead time by 6 weeks

   2. Objective: Raise the technical standard of the product team

      1. Key Result: Implement performance metrics before the end of Q1

      2. Key Result: Increase test coverage from 40 to 50%

      3. Key Result: Reduce deployment time from 20 to 2 minutes

4. Release Management

   1. Objective: Execute a successful enterprise product launch

      1. Key Result: Achieve zero severity-1 issues

      2. Key Result: Complete 30 successful beta tests

      3. Key Result: Confirm 90% or more of target features

   2. Objective: Improve the readability of our product release process

      1. Key Result: Reduce product bugs by 30%

      2. Key Result: Reduce sign-up flow churn from 35 to 10%

      3. Key Result: Improve app rating from 4.0 to 4.5

      4. Key Result: Improve NPS from 8.0 to 9.3

5. Engagement and Customer Satisfaction

   1. Objective: Improve enterprise customer satisfaction

      1. Key Result: Increase NPS from 7.5 to 9.0

      2. Key Result: Reduce support tickets per customer per month from 2.7 to 2.2

      3. Key Result: Complete 15 phone interviews with churned customers

      4. Key Result: Improve overall G2 enterprise rating from 4.5 to 4.7

   2. Objective: Accelerate revenue per customer

      1. Key Result: Improve lifetime value from $25,000 to $30,000

      2. Key Result: Increase upsell from 14 to 20% ARR

      3. Key Result: Reduce churn by 5%

      4. Key Result: Increase net revenue retention by 7%

      5. Key Result: Increase gross profit margins from 55 to 65%

   3. Objective: Build enterprise customer advocacy

      1. Key Result: Publish four new case studies

      2. Key Result: Secure 20 customer commitments to provide references

      3. Key Result: Obtain 30 new G2 enterprise reviews with a 4.5 rating or higher

   4. Objective: Provide an easy onboarding experience

      1. Key Result: Have 75% of new users complete onboarding in the first month after launch

      2. Key Result: Have fewer than 10% of users require customer support during onboarding

      3. Key Result: Engage 50% of users with core product features within the first 24 hours of onboarding

   5. Objective: Drive trial sign-ups

      1. Key Result: Increase landing page conversion rates to 20%

      2. Key Result: Generate 1,000 qualified marketing leads through organic traffic

      3. Key Result: Achieve a 10% click-through rate on paid advertising

   6. Objective: Expand our impact by selling to enterprise customers

      1. Key Result: Win 20 new enterprise accounts

      2. Key Result: Grow sales-touched revenue by 20%

      3. Key Result: Grow ARPA by 15%

      4. Key Result: Launch our next major product initiative

   7. Objective: Help customers categorize data for rapid retrieval

      1. Key Result: Ship tag management

      2. Key Result: Ship advanced search features

      3. Key Result: Achieve an 80% decrease in support tickets related to tags

6. Operations and Enablement

   1. Objective: Create a high-performing, agile product team

      1. Key Result: Conduct product management training with 95% of team members

      2. Key Result: Complete 10 internal knowledge-sharing sessions

      3. Key Result: Hold structured team reviews every eight weeks

   2. Objective: Build the best product management team in our market

      1. Key Result: Increase internal satisfaction scores from 7.5 to 9.0

      2. Key Result: Hold quarterly release celebrations with at least five individual public recognitions

      3. Key Result: Implement a new agile delivery process

   3. Objective: Establish the product team as a thought leader

      1. Key Result: Publish four articles about the team’s processes

      2. Key Result: Host three roundtables on product management

      3. Key Result: Secure three speaking slots at industry conferences

Why Product OKRs Matter

Product OKRs are central to your organization in creating a product that functions as expected across engineers and designers to sales and marketing. Robust OKRs give product teams a framework to connect a product's required outcomes with the indicators that show employees whether they’re on the right track or need to change course.

Benefits of Product OKRs

There are four benefits of product OKRs once your teams identify them:

1. Focusing on outcomes rather than output, such as how a product works.

2. Cross-functional alignment that connects all facets of the product.

3. Strategic execution correlates company-level objectives and feature development.

4. Adaptability over a quarterly product OKR cycle when markets shift or customer feedback showcases negative aspects of a product.

How to Set Product OKRs

Follow this four-step process to set product OKRs:

1. Brainstorm objectives that align with product vision and high-level goals.

2. Set up five key results for each objective that are measurable and achievable.

3. Create one to five initiatives for each key result so that teams know what tasks they need to work on.

4. Create an OKR statement for each one that goes, “We will [objective] as measured by [key results].

What Is Not a Product OKR?

Consider a journey from one destination to another. A product strategy is the route you take. OKRs are the road signs along the way, telling you how far you’ve gone and how far you need to continue. Knowing the goal is not an OKR. Knowing the goal and taking steps to reach it are the product OKRs.

OKRs vs. Product Vision

Think of OKRs as a narrower scope compared to product vision. OKRs are actionable. The product vision serves as the ultimate purpose and future impact of the product.

OKR vs. Product Roadmap

Your product roadmap uses a planning tool to highlight deliverables, such as features, updates, and improvements, needed to meet objectives. OKRs complement the roadmap by showing what teams need to do to meet the objectives.

OKR vs. Product Strategy

A strategy is a high-level look that outlines how a product achieves its goals to meet the needs of your target market. OKRs measure the progress toward the goals outlined in the strategy. A strategy guides the process; an OKR measures it.

Product OKR vs. KPI

Both OKRs and KPIs measure success. But KPIs signal the health of the business by looking backward. OKRs show you what needs to happen to move forward.

Product OKR Mistakes vs. Best Practices

Avoid these mistakes, and use these best practices when designing product OKRs:

• Don’t use an inconsistent scoring framework. Stick with one framework across the entire OKR process.

• Don’t abandon your OKRs, but provide weekly updates on the progress teams make.

• Don’t set vanity metrics, but connect OKRs to your products to ensure a purpose behind the work.

• Don’t measure outputs instead of outcomes.

• Don’t see OKRs as a top-down, leaders-only project. Instead, gather input for all stakeholders.

• Don’t misalign product teams with other teams’ OKRs, but keep them focused on their tasks.

• Don’t take a goals-first approach instead of a roadmap-first approach.

• Don’t conflate key results and initiatives. Instead, connect key results to a metric.

Manage Product OKRs Without the Paperwork

At Brev, we give leadership a real-time view of OKR progress throughout your organization. Our software connects with existing workplace tools and meetings to automatically capture decisions, update goals, track commitments, and surface risks across all teams. Brev acts as a persistent “company brain” to give leadership a real-time view of progress across the organization without requiring teams to prepare status reports or adopt another system.

Let Brev operate as your company brain while keeping OKRs top of mind. Request a free demo  or start your free trial with Brev today.