9 customisable OKR examples for Tech Debt
What are Tech Debt OKRs?
The OKR acronym stands for Objectives and Key Results. It's a goal-setting framework that was introduced at Intel by Andy Grove in the 70s, and it became popular after John Doerr introduced it to Google in the 90s. OKRs helps teams has a shared language to set ambitious goals and track progress towards them.
OKRs are quickly gaining popularity as a goal-setting framework. But, it's not always easy to know how to write your goals, especially if it's your first time using OKRs.
To aid you in setting your goals, we have compiled a collection of OKR examples customized for Tech Debt. Take a look at the templates below for inspiration and guidance.
If you want to learn more about the framework, you can read our OKR guide online.
Building your own Tech Debt 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 Tech Debt OKRs examples
You'll find below a list of Objectives and Key Results templates for Tech Debt. We also included strategic projects for each template to make it easier to understand the difference between key results and projects.
Hope you'll find this helpful!
1. OKRs to enhance Webhooks Experience and Address Technical Debt
Enhance Webhooks Experience and Address Technical Debt
Increase webhook delivery success rate by 10% through optimized error handling
Enhance webhook monitoring and alerting system to promptly identify and investigate delivery failures- Improve error response messaging to provide clear instructions for troubleshooting and resolving issues
- Analyze webhook error logs to identify common errors and create specific error handling strategies
- Implement automated retry mechanism to resend failed webhook deliveries in case of temporary errors
- Reduce webhook response time by 20% by streamlining and optimizing the underlying technology
- Reduce technical debt by resolving 50% of identified issues through prioritized backlog refinements
- Implement automated testing for webhooks to ensure compatibility and reduce regression issues
- Integrate the automated testing framework with the existing webhook infrastructure
- Continuously monitor and analyze test results to identify and address any compatibility issues
- Research and select a suitable automated testing framework for webhooks
- Develop a comprehensive test suite for webhooks to cover all possible scenarios
2. OKRs to reduce technical debt
- Reduce significantly the technical debt in our platform
- Dedicated 20% of our sprint effort to tackling technical debt
- Close 40 issues tagged as technical debt
- Boost application performance by 40% as a result of the debt culling
3. OKRs to allocate resources to refactor high-priority tech debt
- Reduce technical debt by allocating resources effectively
- Implement best practices to avoid future high-priority tech debt accumulation
- Achieve a reduction in high-priority tech debt items by 25%
- Establish a clear plan for refactoring high-priority tech debt items
- Prioritize high-priority tech debt items for resource allocation
4. 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
5. OKRs to substantially reduce technical debt across all projects
- Substantially reduce technical debt across all projects
- Achieve 95% test code coverage to identify and correct hidden bugs
- Use a code coverage tool to measure efficiency
- Refactor poorly covered code sections
- Write comprehensive unit tests for each function or component
- Decrease codebase complexity by 25% using refactoring techniques
- Implement effective refactoring techniques to simplify code
- Regularly review and optimize code to maintain simplicity
- Identify redundant and inefficient code for elimination
- Conduct bi-weekly code reviews to identify and solve 30% of debt issues
- Schedule bi-weekly code review sessions
- Identify issues contributing to code debt
- Implement solutions for 30% of identified issues
6. 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
7. OKRs to minimize technical debt across all 100 crawlers
- Minimize technical debt across all 100 crawlers
- Reduce the number of crippling bugs by 60% across all active crawlers
- Allocate more resources for extensive crawler bug testing
- Roll out regular updates to eliminate known issues
- Implement rigorous code review before deployment
- Develop and implement robust refactoring plans for 75% of identified issues
- Implement refactoring plans across 75% of identified areas
- Identify key areas requiring refactoring within the system
- Create comprehensive, efficient refactoring plans for these areas
- Identify and document technical debt in 100% of the crawlers
- Review all crawler codes to identify technical debt
- Log debt detail in a central tracking system
- Prepare a comprehensive technical debt report
8. OKRs to reduce critical tech debt by 50% in six months
- Minimize tech debt
- Develop a plan of action to address targeted tech debt items
- Prioritize critical tech debt items
- Conduct a thorough tech debt analysis
- Implement new development standards to prevent tech debt accumulation
9. 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%
Tech Debt 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 Tech Debt OKRs in a strategy map
Your quarterly OKRs should be tracked weekly in order to get all the benefits of the OKRs 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 Tech Debt OKR templates
We have more templates to help you draft your team goals and OKRs.
- OKRs to achieve a 20% upsurge in organic traffic for designated categories
- OKRs to secure 9 million in funding for the annual campaign
- OKRs to achieve 10% organic growth via event marketing
- OKRs to ensure punctual and high-quality project delivery
- OKRs to develop and launch a web based multiplayer game
- OKRs to increase efficiency in customer support process
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 👀
Tability is a unique goal-tracking platform built to save hours at work and help teams stay on top of their goals.
1 Create your workspace
2 Build plans in seconds with AI
3Track your progress