Developers OKRs

Crafting effective OKRs can be challenging, particularly for beginners. Emphasizing outcomes rather than projects should be the core of your planning.

We have a collection of OKRs examples for Developers to give you some inspiration. You can use any of the templates below as a starting point for your OKRs.

If you want to learn more about the framework, you can read more about the meaning of OKRs online.

Examples of OKRs for Developers

The examples have Developers Objectives and Key Results, but they may also include the tasks that can help you get there.

You'll find 10 OKRs examples for Developers below, and some extra tips to write better quarterly plans at the end.

OKRs to improve engineering performance and reliability

  • ObjectiveBuild a world-class infrastructure
  • Key ResultIncrease Apdex above 0.95
  • TaskCache requests wherever possible
  • TaskIdentify and resolve to 5 application bottlenecks
  • Key ResultReduce build time to be under 5 minutes
  • TaskAudit test suite to reduce duplicates
  • TaskSwitch to a more performing build infrastructure
  • Key ResultOur stress tests show that we can support 10,000 concurrent users

OKRs to attain great security standards

  • ObjectiveAttain great security standards
  • Key ResultAll developers score 90+ in our security awareness training
  • Key Result100% of devices are enrolled in a Mobile Device Management system
  • Key Result100% of our services have a threat mitigation system in place
  • Key ResultOur policies cover 100% of the ISO 27001 requirements

OKRs to accelerate release cycles

  • ObjectiveIncrease the velocity of our releases through automation
  • Key ResultIncrease production deployments from 1/week to 4/week
  • TaskCreate deployment pipeline on Github
  • TaskAutomate deployment scripts
  • Key ResultReduce build time from 20mins to 5mins
  • TaskReview test suites and cut expensive tests
  • TaskEnable parallel builds
  • Key ResultReduce the mean lead time for changes from 8 days to 72h
  • TaskSet up dedicate code review time to accelerate PR reviews
  • Key Result100% of our services have a Continuous Delivery pipeline

OKRs to tackle technical debt

  • ObjectiveTackle technical debt generated by feature rush
  • Key ResultMigrate 80% of projects to new UI library to reduce UI debt
  • Key ResultReduce percentage of issues tagged as debt by 30%
  • Key ResultReduce debt-related contact rate by 50%

OKRs to accelerate development via automation

  • ObjectiveAccelerate development through automation
  • Key Result100% of repos have a Continuous Delivery pipeline
  • TaskUse Github Actions/Bitbucket Pipelines to automate deployments on every commit
  • TaskCreate automated deployment scripts for all repos
  • Key ResultIncrease code coverage from 30% to 60%
  • Key ResultReduce cycle time from 8 days to 8h
  • Key ResultReduce build time from 20min to 5min
  • TaskAudit tests to find areas of improvements
  • TaskSplit tests to run in parallel when possible

OKRs to improve engineering release cycles

  • ObjectiveSignificantly increase the speed of our development cycle
  • Key ResultImprove developer NPS from 20 to 60
  • Key ResultReduce build times from 25 to under 5 mins
  • Key ResultReduce cycle time from 28 days to 6 days
  • TaskImplement CD pipeline for the staging environment
  • TaskAutomate all deployment steps

OKRs to migrate to a new technology

  • ObjectiveOur JS codebase has migrated to TypeScript
  • Key ResultReduce the use of "any" type by 30%
  • Key Result75% of our JS repositories are now using TypeScript
  • Key Result80% of frontend developers have gone through TypeScript training

OKRs to achieve great performance and reliability

  • ObjectiveAchieve amazing performance with a world-class infrastructure
  • Key ResultIncrease Apdex from 0.7 to 0.98
  • TaskAdd a CDN in front of resources
  • TaskImplement caching wherever possible
  • TaskMinify scripts and CSS
  • Key ResultImprove crash free sessions from 75% to 95%
  • Key ResultReduce core pages load time to be under 3s
  • Key ResultReduce the number of paged issues by 40%
  • TaskIdentify and fix top 10 recurring issues

OKRs to increase code quality

  • ObjectiveDemonstrate incredible standards in code quality
  • Key Result100% of pull requests are reviewed by 2 developers
  • Key Result75% of the developers have gone through QA training
  • Key Result100% of repositories are using code linting and static code analysis
  • Key ResultReduce the percentage of QA-related broken builds by 60%

OKRs to deliver great user experience

  • ObjectiveSignificantly improve the user experience through better performance
  • Key ResultDecrease the number of production exceptions by 45%
  • Key ResultAccelerate customer instance cold start time from 2min to 10s
  • Key ResultReduce API response time from 900ms to 450ms
  • Key ResultImprove NPS from 15 to 35

Not seeing what you need?

You can use a goal-setting AI to generate great OKRs for you based on a description of your objectives.

How to track your OKRs?

It's important to establish a cadence of check-ins for your OKRs for Developers.

Quarterly OKRs should have weekly updates to get all the benefits from the framework.

We recommend using a spreadsheet for your first OKRs cycle. You'll need to get familiar with the scoring and tracking first. Then, you can scale your OKRs process by using a proper OKRs-tracking tool for it.

Check out the 5 best OKR tracking templates to find the best way to monitor progress during the quarter.

OKRs resources

Here are a list of resources to help you adopt the Objectives and Key Results framework.