15 customisable OKR examples for Developers
What are Developers OKRs?
The Objective and Key Results (OKR) framework is a simple goal-setting methodology that was introduced at Intel by Andy Grove in the 70s. It became popular after John Doerr introduced it to Google in the 90s, and it's now used by teams of all sizes to set and track ambitious goals at scale.
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 our OKR guide online.
Building your own Developers OKRs with AI
While we have some examples available, it's likely that you'll have specific scenarios that aren't covered here. You can use our free AI generator below or our more complete goal-setting system to generate your own OKRs.
Feel free to explore our tools:
- Use our free OKR generator
- Use Tability, a complete platform to set and track OKRs and initiatives, including a GPT-4 powered goal generator
Our customisable Developers OKRs examples
You will find in the next section many different Developers Objectives and Key Results. We've included strategic initiatives in our templates to give you a better idea of the different between the key results (how we measure progress), and the initiatives (what we do to achieve the results).
Hope you'll find this helpful!
1. OKRs to enhance backend tech knowledge of two front-end developers
Enhance backend tech knowledge of two front-end developers
Conduct 4 comprehensive interactive workshops on different backend technologies
Create marketing campaign to promote workshops- Schedule and organize the workshop logistics
- Identify topics and experts for each backend technology workshop
- Ensure regular practical assignments for hands-on experience with feedback
- Develop a schedule for regular practical assignments
- Monitor and adjust assignments based on feedback
- Implement a system for providing constructive feedback
- Achieve 80% improvement in their backend coding skills through weekly testing
- Take weekly tests to assess improvement
- Dedicate five hours weekly for coding practice
- Enroll in a reputed online backend coding course
2. OKRs to eliminate high-risk tech debt over the next year
- Reduce high-risk tech debt to improve system stability
- Conduct a thorough analysis to measure the impact of eliminating each high-risk tech debt item
- Outline and prioritize initiatives to eliminate each high-risk tech debt item
- Complete the elimination of at least 50% of high-risk tech debt items
- Identify top 10 high-risk tech debt items
3. OKRs to improve engineering performance and reliability
- Build a world-class infrastructure
- Increase Apdex above 0.95
- Cache requests wherever possible
- Identify and resolve to 5 application bottlenecks
- Reduce build time to be under 5 minutes
- Audit test suite to reduce duplicates
- Switch to a more performing build infrastructure
- Our stress tests show that we can support 10,000 concurrent users
4. OKRs to attain great security standards
- Attain great security standards
- All developers score 90+ in our security awareness training
- 100% of devices are enrolled in a Mobile Device Management system
- 100% of our services have a threat mitigation system in place
- Our policies cover 100% of the ISO 27001 requirements
5. OKRs to improve AI security requirements operationalization for developers’ comprehension
- Improve AI security requirements operationalization for developers’ comprehension
- Develop and deploy a standardized AI security guideline by 25%
- Draft a comprehensive AI security guideline
- Reduce guideline by 25% focusing on core elements
- Implement the streamlined AI security guideline across all systems
- Reduce misunderstandings in AI security requirements by 30% through improved documentation
- Conduct regular staff trainings highlighting documentation procedures
- Establish clear, concise writing guidelines for technical content
- Implement a standardized format for all AI security requirement documents
- Conduct bi-weekly developer trainings on new AI security protocols resulting in 80% adherence
6. OKRs to enforce coding standards to prevent new tech debt
- Standardize coding practices for debt reduction
- Conduct training sessions to educate all team members
- Reduce tech debt backlog by 50% through enforcement of standards
- Develop and implement updated coding standards
- Conduct quarterly reviews to ensure adherence to standards
7. OKRs to reduce app loading time by 20%
- Improve app loading time
- Identify key performance bottlenecks
- Conduct app performance analysis
- Implement code optimization techniques
- Test app performance after optimizations
8. OKRs to develop and launch a new API for the CAD company
- Develop and launch a new API for the CAD company
- Receive positive feedback and testimonials from beta testers and early adopters
- Share positive feedback and testimonials on social media platforms and company website
- Offer incentives, such as discounts or freebies, to encourage beta testers and early adopters to provide feedback and testimonials
- Create a feedback form to collect positive experiences and testimonials from users
- Send personalized email to beta testers and early adopters requesting feedback and testimonials
- Complete the API design and documentation, incorporating all required functionalities
- Successfully implement API integration with multiple CAD software applications
- Provide training and support to users for effectively utilizing the integrated APIs
- Test the API integration with each CAD software application to ensure seamless functionality
- Develop a comprehensive documentation for the API integration process with each CAD software application
- Identify and research the CAD software applications that require API integration
- Achieve a minimum of 95% API uptime during the testing and deployment phase
9. OKRs to accelerate release cycles
- Increase the velocity of our releases through automation
- Increase production deployments from 1/week to 4/week
- Create deployment pipeline on Github
- Automate deployment scripts
- Reduce build time from 20mins to 5mins
- Review test suites and cut expensive tests
- Enable parallel builds
- Reduce the mean lead time for changes from 8 days to 72h
- Set up dedicate code review time to accelerate PR reviews
- 100% of our services have a Continuous Delivery pipeline
10. OKRs to establish a go-to platform for leadership and niche hiring
- Establish a go-to platform for leadership and niche hiring
- Attract and onboard 1000 unique leadership profiles to the platform
- Implement referral incentives for current users
- Develop marketing campaigns targeting potential leadership profile candidates
- Craft an engaging, user-friendly onboarding process
- Secure partnerships with 50 leading companies in relevant industries
- Reach out and negotiate partnerships with targeted companies
- Develop proposals outlining mutual benefits for potential partners
- Research and identify 50 prospective industry leaders for partnerships
- Achieve a 20% conversion rate in hiring through the platform
- Enhance job description clarity to attract right candidates
- Implement comprehensive onboarding to increase acceptance rate
- Improve screening processes for more qualified candidate selection
11. OKRs to tackle technical debt
- Tackle technical debt generated by feature rush
- Migrate 80% of projects to new UI library to reduce UI debt
- Reduce percentage of issues tagged as debt by 30%
- Reduce debt-related contact rate by 50%
12. OKRs to successfully launch the tech startup
- Successfully launch the tech startup
- Secure funding from at least three investors by increasing company visibility
- Enhance online presence through social media and optimized website
- Participate in industry networking events
- Develop a compelling investor presentation
- Develop, test and launch the MVP (minimum viable product) targeting user validation
- Design and develop the minimum viable product
- Carry out rigorous testing and fixing of the MVP
- Launch MVP and collect user validation data
- Hire and onboard five skilled developers to establish the product team
- Create a detailed job description for developer positions
- Promote vacancies on targeted recruitment platforms
- Develop a comprehensive onboarding program
13. OKRs to accelerate development via automation
- Accelerate development through automation
- 100% of repos have a Continuous Delivery pipeline
- Use Github Actions/Bitbucket Pipelines to automate deployments on every commit
- Create automated deployment scripts for all repos
- Increase code coverage from 30% to 60%
- Reduce cycle time from 8 days to 8h
- Reduce build time from 20min to 5min
- Audit tests to find areas of improvements
- Split tests to run in parallel when possible
14. OKRs to improve engineering release cycles
- Significantly increase the speed of our development cycle
- Improve developer NPS from 20 to 60
- Reduce build times from 25 to under 5 mins
- Reduce cycle time from 28 days to 6 days
- Implement CD pipeline for the staging environment
- Automate all deployment steps
15. OKRs to migrate to a new technology
- Our JS codebase has migrated to TypeScript
- Reduce the use of "any" type by 30%
- 75% of our JS repositories are now using TypeScript
- 80% of frontend developers have gone through TypeScript training
Developers OKR best practices to boost success
Generally speaking, your objectives should be ambitious yet achievable, and your key results should be measurable and time-bound (using the SMART framework can be helpful). It is also recommended to list strategic initiatives under your key results, as it'll help you avoid the common mistake of listing projects in your KRs.
Here are a couple of best practices extracted from our OKR implementation guide 👇
Tip #1: Limit the number of key results
The #1 role of OKRs is to help you and your team focus on what really matters. Business-as-usual activities will still be happening, but you do not need to track your entire roadmap in the OKRs.
We recommend having 3-4 objectives, and 3-4 key results per objective. A platform like Tability can run audits on your data to help you identify the plans that have too many goals.
Tability's audit dashboard will highlight opportunities to improve OKRsTip #2: Commit to weekly OKR check-ins
Don't fall into the set-and-forget trap. It is important to adopt a weekly check-in process to get the full value of your OKRs and make your strategy agile – otherwise this is nothing more than a reporting exercise.
Being able to see trends for your key results will also keep yourself honest.
Tability's check-ins will save you hours and increase transparencyTip #3: No more than 2 yellow statuses in a row
Yes, this is another tip for goal-tracking instead of goal-setting (but you'll get plenty of OKR examples above). But, once you have your goals defined, it will be your ability to keep the right sense of urgency that will make the difference.
As a rule of thumb, it's best to avoid having more than 2 yellow/at risk statuses in a row.
Make a call on the 3rd update. You should be either back on track, or off track. This sounds harsh but it's the best way to signal risks early enough to fix things.
How to turn your Developers OKRs in a strategy map
Quarterly OKRs should have weekly updates to get all the benefits from the framework. Reviewing progress periodically has several advantages:
- It brings the goals back to the top of the mind
- It will highlight poorly set OKRs
- It will surface execution risks
- It improves transparency and accountability
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 OKR-tracking tool for it.
Tability's Strategy Map makes it easy to see all your org's OKRsIf you're not yet set on a tool, you can check out the 5 best OKR tracking templates guide to find the best way to monitor progress during the quarter.
More Developers OKR templates
We have more templates to help you draft your team goals and OKRs.
- OKRs to ensure readiness for GA release of product on Linux
- OKRs to within budget
- OKRs to improve code quality through effective code reviews
- OKRs to boost asset growth from new and existing customers
- OKRs to reinstate Intel's victorious culture and unify its talent pool
- OKRs to enhance my leadership capabilities
OKRs resources
Here are a list of resources to help you adopt the Objectives and Key Results framework.
- To learn: What is the meaning of OKRs
- Blog posts: ODT Blog
- Success metrics: KPIs examples
Create more examples in our app
You can use Tability to create OKRs with AI – and keep yourself accountable 👀
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