How product teams can measure progress through outcome OKRs

Based on the consequences of the key results, OKRs can be separated into three different types:

• Impact-ish OKRs: a high-level expression of the company’s strategic priority expressed through a result/metric.
• Outcome-ish OKRs: a change in human behaviour that creates an impact on a department level. It can be validated through the “how might we” test.
• Output-ish OKRs: a completed activity that aims to create a change in behaviour and has an impact on a team level.

Categorising your OKRs like this will likely not be enough for actually working with them on a day-to-day basis.

A second layer should be pointing out the likelihood of the aimed change.

This can be measured by a concept that has been around for a while:

• Leading indicators are more difficult to spot since they require insights from actual user behaviour.
• Lagging indicators: are easier to spot (e.g. user growth, revenue) but are often unresponsive and hard to change from a company perspective.

The most common and risky mistake when using these techniques is to ignore a lack of clarity:

Lack of clarity on the inputs for your OKR definition: You need to have your vision, strategy, customer insights, and roadmap in place to be able to estimate your next contribution to your success.

Lack of clarity on the goals of your OKRs: Do you want to measure performance, enable more focus, and get the team more autonomy?

Output key results for Product Discovery are a bit controversial since they are easy to misuse, but can be helpful for teams that struggle with prioritizing discovery work and/or discussing its progress. Metrics like “number of winning prototypes” or “number of opt-ins to user testing” can help make Discovery become a more sustainable practice.

• Mind that there are no right or wrong OKRs, just different dimensions (with relating consequences) that you as a team should be aware of.
• Be aware of unclear aspects of your OKR inputs as well as the goals you want to achieve.
• Consider using output-driven OKRs as a helpful tool to establish a product discovery practice.
• Set up regular check-ins – on the team and company level.