How can you use OKRs to track project progress?

OKRs are a powerful tool for tracking project progress. The key is ensuring that clear objectives are set, which can sometimes be the risk factor of most projects. As unclear objectives may result in an inability to track, assess progress effectively and achieve results. The other aspect is aligning the desired goals (Objectives) with measurable outcomes. By identifying 2 to 4 means to measure progress, it provides a clear indicator of progress or lack thereof, which illuminates an opportunity to reassess and infuse strategies to revise, refocus or recalibrate. Done right, OKRs keep projects on track.

Very simple and accurate definition for OKR. It’s true and I agree that Objectives are measured performance qualitatively and Key Results are measured performance quantitatively. It’s important to understand and align project objectives with Organisation objectives.

OKR can be a combination of your objective and numbers that you have achieved so far! As far as I’ve see or worked on, every department’s head present a OKR to CEO or Chairperson letting them know what his team has done along with the efficiency. It also helps you to clear your thought if you have stuck in something and get some feedback for you to do better in the upcoming month!

OKR can have important objective(which is more impacting for org) first and then low priority at the end, but keep it till 5 objectives only! If you team is small, you can talk about individuals contributions but if it’s big you can talk about smalls teams working with you! It helps you to get the idea about what the team has done along with the efficiency. It also helps you to clear your thought if you have stuck in something and get some feedback for you to do better in the upcoming month!

One way I have found OKRs helpful is using it as a strategy to motivate and challenge the project team. For example, once the clear objective has been set, for example, "Launch new mobile app feature by Q2", And specific, measureable key results have been identified to achieving this objective, example: Complete mobile app by April 30; Reach 500 new daily active users within the first month after mobile app feature launch. The team is motivated to working towards achieving these incremental results and are energized once they have hit each results, leading to the achievement of the overall objective! Super motivating. #RoseJames

Strategy Alignment is the key activity and also a performance domain as per PgMP standards to set objectives and key results. It is important to have challenging objectives that drives project team. Here 2 benefits. 1. Project achieve its goals and also achieve organisations goals 2. Project Managers develop a high performance team .

Your OKR can be presented monthly (subjected to company’s culture) but to track the project progress you need to iteratively have scrum and sprints for every task that you are working on. You can break in every week and have discussion with your team if we are touching the deadline every week or not! You can wake up at the end and push your team to touch the deadline in last few days! You can use different tools like Trello, JIRA etc to track those quantifying numbers to see if you are touching it or not

It is imperative to regularly track the key results to assess your project performance. This is important because the objective of monitoring project progress is not simply to check a box, however it is to inform if the true results of the project objectives are imminent. Do this by quantifying your tracking mechanism, with low to high. Low indicating far from target and high indicating close to target. Amend strategies appropriately as needed base on this information.

Project manager should have clear mapping between project objectives and organisation objectives. As part of project performance management report, project manager measures key results and identifies its current status with planned status. Any variation should be addressed by taking corrective actions.

OKR can have some ratings or measurement score from you to let the team know what progress has been made along with the stage you are to finish the project! If you are stuck or don’t have a long term visibility, you can discuss with stakeholders in the meeting. It also helps you to clear your thought if you have stuck in something and get some feedback for you to do better in the upcoming month!

See, at the end OKR is nothing but a progress along with evacuation! How successfully you get the project done depends on how well you get the stuff done from your team. If you understood the requirements well and communicated well to your team along with proper follow up, it will eventually push your project forward with a good ace! Having a good team and still not getting the project completed will eventually show that you are not a good leader, and making a good progress will boost your confidence. It gives a vibes to the stakeholders how exactly you get things going So if you are doing well in OKR, your leadership skills improved so the confidence

The mark of a great leader lies in the ability to articulate a clear vision to the team. Ambiguous vision, objectives, breed confusion. Confusion breeds low quality output. Low quality output breeds waste. And Waste breeds delays. As a project leader, leveraging OKRs can be an effective leadership tool to ensure Clear objectives are set and communicated to the team, which provides clarity in all aspects of delivery or achieving the Key results.

OKRs also involve systems, and by considering the technology side, you can bring transparency not only to the team but to all stakeholders and the whole company. It does not matter which tool you use because it would depend on the company/team size, budget and other resources. The key here is to make them useful also for scalability. At this point, remember to experiment, fail, adjust, and improve while aligning objectives and results with project, business strategy, and team objectives.