How to articulate work against business objectives

  • OKRs are nice for tracking and measuring them, but they do not explain how to achieve them.

    Trying random product ideas will generate a lot of waste, and will have a very low probability of success.

    You need a highly-skilled and entreprenerial people to be able to fill the gap from the goals with measurable metrics to strategy, plan and execution. Basically you work like a research scientists, making a series of experiments, until you find an idea which moves your KRs.

    This is how I see it:

      Mission
        Objectives
          KRs                            (= goals + measurable metrics)
            Problems/Jobs/Opportunities  (Problem-space, JTBD, OST)
              Ideas                      (Solution-space, Strategy, how to achive KR)
                Step-Projects            (Validation/De-Risking/Experiment or feature delivery)
                  Scopes                 (list of related tasks)
                    Tasks                (TODOs)
    
    
    Terms & Abbreviations:

      KRs:  Key Results
      JTBD: Jobs-To-Be-Done
      OST:  Opportunity Solution Tree
     
    
    Also see GIST (Goals-Ideas-Steps-Tasks) framework:

    https://itamargilad.com/gist-framework/

  • "This might sound simple, but I think it’s harder than it seems to..."

    This 100% – There is so much nuance to getting this right. Aligning:

    Strategy (Business/Product) -> OKRs -> Opportunities -> Work

    is never done well. I'm working to solve this problem with https://vistaly.com – by taking a very visual (and connected) approach to the problem, which is where, in my experience, alignment starts to break down.

    I'm a fan of OSTs for helping with this (https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-tree/)

  • What do you mean by “work against business objectives”?