Overview

Key Results are outcomes by which success is measured for an objective. They provide clarity on where a team should focus its work, and what victory looks like.

Key results can be updated on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.

Setting Key Results - Best Practices

• Key results shouldn’t be action items, or be subject to interpretation.
• There should be 4 - 6 key results for each objective.
• A team should define their key results keeping the best possible in mind.
• Best possible: What would be awesome to achieve this quarter? Best possible results likely won’t be hit 100%, as the main importance is discussing learnings for the quarter.
• Update Key Results consistently on a weekly basis (when applicable), to inform your team and others of your progress to achievement.
• Provide a narrative and additional context into why the number is the way it is when you update key results.

Anatomy of a Key Result

• Description (what is being measured?)
• Starting value
• Target value (best possible)
• Unit of measure ($, #, %)
• Measurement frequency (risk, focus, and change adjusted)
• Data source (person, system, workstream)

Pick the type of result that best suits what you're measuring. This may be a basic count that one person will provide, collected data from several people, or a result calculated from workstreams or other apps.

Choose what to measure

As you create key results in the OKR Wizard, the default is a basic count or percentage, but you can modify these measurement types to include numbers or currency.

For example:

• Sales revenue from Jorge [would likely use Currency]
• Number of developers hired from Alice [would likely use Number]
• Completion % of an IT infrastructure overhaul from Percy [would likely use Percent]

Learn how to set basic results here.