preface

Agile has been implemented in our team for nearly five years. As a relatively mature team, many problems have emerged, such as the lack of long-term planning for the future and the lack of enthusiasm and passion in work of many team members. Most of the teams are busy with the work on the project, and pay insufficient attention to their own growth. There is a danger of boiling frogs in warm water. Recently, I have been looking for appropriate means to help everyone break through the difficulties and activate the team again. I found THAT OKR is a good way, so I started to learn and try to practice. I’m just getting started, so let’s write down some thoughts here to help the next generation.

Agile vs. OKR

OKR and Agile are not new concepts. Google first uses OKR internally and extensively. There are plenty of references to its practices that you can check out if you are interested, but not every company is Google, so copycat is not always a good idea. Agile development has been popular for over 20 years, a little longer than OKR.

The relationship between the two is shown in the figure below:



Agile focuses on an iterative and improvement, focus on the growth of the team and the achievement of project objectives, OKR is to focus on the target and track, focus on personal and organizational growth, seemingly, but in fact the two are similar to the influence that the team, and emphasizes the organization and drive team culture are both the most powerful motivation and spiritual support. At the same time, the implementation of Agile and OKR further promotes the formation and growth of team culture. Agile development provides an excellent rhythm for OKR evaluation and updating, and OKR provides a path and yardstick for teams and individuals in agile development to grow.

Combining agile and OKR practices

  • The OKR is developed at large annual and quarterly review meetings, making the OKR a thread for the team, especially for larger multi-project teams, which tend to be fragmented by projects and find it difficult to maintain a consistent team culture
  • Fixed retrospective meetings are no longer held by the project team but are held together by the team to review the health of the team OKR, and to complete OKR updates and alignments. PS (below 20, more than or need to separate, each small team leader OKR alignment)
  • Make the team’s OKR transparent and post it on the mission kanban so everyone can see it every day when they stand up
  • Encourage team members to keep an eye out for others’ OKRs so they can align and help if needed
  • During the planning meeting, team members are encouraged to consider how the team’s and their OWN OKR goals relate to the iteration and whether they need to be listed separately and included in the work items of the cycle.

Some tips before importing OKR

  • Agile development itself has many processes or specific actions, try to integrate OKR, do not let OKR burden the team
  • By all means introduce OKR, but consider asking people to create their own goals and plans first. After introducing OKR, let people compare and feel the differences and adjust OKR
  • Consider hiring an OKR coach to advise the team