Product Management OKR examples

Writing good, well structured OKRs increases performance and engagement.

While sales and marketing OKRs are often easier to set, product and engineering teams find it a bit harder to write meaningful OKRs. In this article, we'll share some of the challenges that Product teams face when setting the OKRs and share tips on how to resolve them.

The specifics of the product OKRs

We often hear these questions from the product teams before setting OKRs:

1. How to write good product management OKRs?
   
2. Is it ok to have a lot of activity-based Key Results?
   
3. What are the best examples of product management OKRs?
   
4. What should we measure in our OKRs?

To answer these questions, let's define how product teams often work.
The main goal of the product team is to release the product that would solve the problem (Jobs-To-Be-Done) of its customers, and customers are willing to pay for it.

Thus, let's break down the product lifecycle in a few steps:

1. User Research
   
2. Design and development
   
3. Release
   
4. Improve the AARRR metrics: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, Revenue
   
5. Improve the team delivery speed/satisfaction/internal processes

For each of these steps, we'll define a few OKRs. Depending on which stage is your product, you might select one of few OKRs from the list to align your team and achieve the best results.

1 — User Research

During the user research, your main task is to understand what problems do your users have and validate that your solution works for them. At this phase, you're more focused on activities (validated ideas, tested prototypes, conducted user interviews, etc.)

Objective 1: Validate the problem-solution fit for the product‍

Key Results:

1. Conduct a Design Sprint to generate and test the solution
2. Validate 10 top-priority hypotheses
3. Conduct 20 problem interviews with the target audience

Objective 2: Implement robust user-testing of our product‍

Key Results:

1. Conduct 15 live usability testing interviews with the paper prototype
2. Receive 10 video interviews from Usertesting.com
3. Integrate user testing into the pre-launch plan

2 — Design and development

When working on the design and developing the product, the team shifts from validating the idea towards the speed with which they deliver the iterations.

Objective 3: Increase the delivery speed of the new features‍

Key Results:

1. Increase the sprint team velocity from 32 to 60 points
   
2. Reduce bugs-per-feature metric from 1.7 to 1.0
   
3. Reduce average lead time by 30%
   
4. Implement educational 1 week-per-quarter plan for the product team‍

‍Objective 4: Build a high-performing product team‍

Key Results:

1. Develop and implement performance metrics for the team
   
2. Increase unit-test coverage from 40% to 50%
   
3. Reduce the deployment time from 20 mins to 2 min with automated CI/CD
   

3 — Release

In the release metrics, we specify here only the product-related metrics. Number of users, number of sign-ups, etc. are marketing metrics. The product team cannot directly influence marketing metrics.

Objective 5: Conduct a successful product launch for v2‍

Key Results:

1. Increase the sign-up to trial Conversion Rate from 15% to 30%
   
2. Increase the trial to paid Conversion Rate from 43% to 60%
   
3. Increase the referral revenue from $20,000 to $50,000‍

Objective 6: Improve the product release process‍

Key Results:

1. Reduce bugs found after the release by 30%
   
2. Reduce the sign-up flow churn from 35% to 10%
   
3. Improve the App Store rating of the new version from 4.0 to 4.5
   
4. Improve NPS from 8.0 to 9.5
   

4 — Improve AARRR metrics

After the release, it's good to monitor and improve the AARRR (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue Referral). Depending on what is the most critical for your product, it's recommended to focus on 1-2 categories during one period. Also, it's better to start from the very beginning of the funnel. Otherwise, you might not benefit from the improvements in your product, since users might not reach that part of the funnel yet.

Note: some Objectives have 5+ Key Results. Feel free to select the ones that are the most important for your team. Best to have 2-5 Key Results per Objective.

Objective 7: Simplify user onboarding‍

Key Results:

1. Reduce churn on sign-up flow from 35% to 10%
   
2. Increase % of users who passed onboarding from 65% to 80%
   
3. Increase % of activated new users (created 3 content pieces) from 50% to 65%‍

‍Objective 8: Increase user engagement‍

Key Results:

1. Increase 1-month retention from 20% to 40%
   
2. Increase average time in the app from 15 mins to 30 mins
   
3. Increase the number of sessions from 5 to 10 sessions per user per day

Objective 9: Improve customer satisfaction‍

Key Results:

1. Improve the NPS score from 8.0 to 9.5
   
2. Reduce the number of requests to support from 2.3 to 1.0 per user per month
   
3. Conduct 20 phone interviews with the churned customers
   
4. Improve App Store rating from 4.0 to 4.5 for the new version
   
5. Improve Google Play rating from 4.2 to 4.7 for latest new version
   
6. Increase % of users willing to leave reviews from 35% to 50%

Objective 10: Skyrocket profits per user‍

Key Results:

1. Improve Lifetime value (LTV) from $500 to $800
   
2. Reduce the payback period from 3 months to 2 months
   
3. Increase the up-sales revenue from $10,000 to $15,000 per month
   
4. Reduce the churned down-sales revenue from $4,000 to $1,000 per month
   
5. Increase the Net Dollar Retention Rate from 123% to 150%
   
6. Increase the gross profit margins from 70% to 80%

Objective 11: Encourage users to refer our product‍

Key Results:

1. Implement the new referral program
   
2. Increase % of users who share from 10% to 20%
   
3. Increase referral new revenue from $5,000 to $15,000 per month

5 — Improve the product team delivery speed/satisfaction/internal processes

Objective 12: Increase product team learning‍

Key Results:

1. Implement 10% learning time for the team
   
2. Increase the Personal Development Plan completion from 60% to 80%
   
3. Conduct 12 knowledge sharing session by team members (1 per week)

Objective 13: Create a dream product team‍

Key Results:

1. Increase internal team NPS from 7.8 to 9.5
   
2. Conduct the off-site team meeting to celebrate the new release
   
3. Implement the new dual-track delivery and discovery process for 2 teams

Objective 14: Share knowledge of our product team with the community‍

Key Results:

1. Release 4 blog articles about our product processes
   
2. Take part in 2 local meetups
   
3. Prepare the speech for the ProductCon conference for the next year
   

Summary

Product Management OKRs are not easy and require some time to master them and use them effectively. It's ok to have value-based Key Results before the release of the product. But after the release, it's best to focus on the most critical metrics of your product.

Here are more OKR examples for Marketing, Engineering, Sales, Human Resources/People Ops teams.

Need a simple and free tool for your team to track OKRs? Check a free OKR tool Plai.
Plai has 80+ templates of OKRs with metrics and you can add them to your cycle with just one click.