OKR Unit
Everything about OKR as a unit
Attributes of an OKR
Content (text of the OKR)
Description ( Extended information on the OKR, this support links to sheets/ Jira)
Owner of the OKR unit ( Person who is responsible for delivering this OKR)
Creator: Creator of the OKR
Parent of an OKR Creator and Parent may or may not be the same. Eg 1: Company objective was created by someone and assigned to someone else. This person is the owner and parent for all subsequent KR’s. Eg 2: Change of ownership. I had created KR’s of an objective but have now transferred ownership of the same to someone else. This person is now the owner of this OKR and parent of all subsequent KR’s.
Children (Key results)
Team(s)/tags
Quarter ( quarter in which the objective is being worked upon)
Status (life-cycle of an OKR)
Progress ( what is the % progress made)
Objective types
User’s see these 2 different types of objectives
Company objectives: L0 objectives of the company. These are OKRs which are marked as company objectives and do not have any parents and have only children. Every OKR which can have any parent (parent/ grandparent or great grandparent etc) as company objective is called an aligned OKR. This is not exposed to the user as a label.
Non-aligned Objective: Below are two states which exist but are not exposed to the users. The user sees the label of non-aligned objectives for both:
Independent objective: Any OKR created which is not a company objective is an independent objective if it does not have any parents and has only children.
KR of independent objective: KR of any independent objective is also a type of non-aligned objective.
Design manifestation of the above on the tool: As of now there are three attributes (that are on the top left side of the objective as labels)
Company objective - not clickable (shows that this is the end of the line)
Non-aligned objective - not clickable (also the end of the line, but not a company objective)
Show alignment - clickable (clicking on this will expand the trail to the highest objective. If it ends in a non-aligned objective we show this attribute on top of the last objective, and if its a company objective, we show that.) Note: Only parents are exposed and not siblings of KRs.
Functionality table:
Type of objective
Type of objective
Behaviour
Company objectives
Independent objective
Same behaviour
Aligned objective
KR of independent objective
Same behaviour
Info/helper text Eg: user declined objective, quarter changed
Permission table for OKR unit:
Activity
Company Objective
Independent Objectives
Any OKR (not a company/independent)
Viewing
Anyone
Anyone
Anyone
Commenting
Anyone
Anyone
Anyone
Creation
Workspace Owner; Admins only
Anyone
Workspace Owner; Admins; Creator; Immediate parent;
Updating
Workspace Owner; Admins, Owner
Workspace Owner; Admins; Creator; Owner
Workspace Owner; Admins; Creator; Immediate parent; Owner
Deletion
Workspace Owner; Admins only
Workspace Owner; Admins; Creator; Owner
Workspace Owner; Admins; Creator; Immediate parent; Owner
States and Stakeholder matrix:
States
Negotiation (Accept/Decline button)
Accepted/Declined (Not working)
Status
Drafting (Not working)
Tracking (On-track, Needs work, Off-track)
Closure (Achieved, Not-achieved)
Stakeholders
Parent
Owner
Viewer
Matrix
States
Parent
Owner
Viewer
Negotiation
Awaiting action (helper text)
Accept/ Decline CTA
Awaiting action (helper text)
Accepted, not started
0% Not Started
0% Not Started
0% Not Started
Declined
Parent becomes owner;
Helper text saying OKR was declined
Nothing;
This gets removed from the Owner's view
Parent is seen as an owner;
Active/ Tracking
Status + Progress%
Status + Progress%
Status + Progress%
Achieved
Status - Achieved; Progress% stays
Status - Achieved; Progress% stays
Status - Achieved; Progress% stays
Dropped
Status - Dropped; Progress% stays
Status - Dropped; Progress% stays
Status - Dropped; Progress% stays
Different quarter : if Parent
Not visible in current quarter
Not visible in current quarter
Until company objective has changed it will show all;
Different quarter : if child
Visible in current quarter with label
Visible in current quarter with label
Until company objective has changed it will show all;
Creation properties: OKR card
By default an OKR is always non-company.
Only Admins have the option to mark it as a company objective.
Company objective label only applied to OKR which doesn’t have any parent. The subsequent ones cannot be company objective.
Ownership
Default owner of an OKR is the creator (if immediate parent doesn’t exist) or the immediate parent.
Do we need a remove owner option? No, we re-assign someone else
Can an owner of an OKR add KRs before accepting it (in negotiation state)? Yes
Can the owner of an objective create a KR for a KR (grandchild)? No
What does an OKR look like when it is assigned to a pending member?
It is indicated that the owner is pending
What happens to an OKR when owner is deleted from the tool? If owner of an OKR is removed, ownership transfers to creator/ immediate parent. If creator is also removed, it is indicated that the owner has been removed (similar to pending).
What happens when both owner and creator are removed from the tool? If owner of an OKR is removed, ownership transfers to creator/ immediate parent.
If creator is also removed, it is indicated that the owner has been removed (similar to pending).
Teams
Teams are tagged to OKRs
Team tags are not mandatory.
There can be multiple teams assigned to an OKR
Team is inherited from the parent objective. This can be changed by the owner or creator. We inherit all teams from parent.
Company objective may or may not have a team tag
What is the maximum number of teams we allow to be tagged to an OKR? (3-5)
Quarter
Global quarter shows active quarter and rest are in the order of chronology;
Quarter is always the current quarter by default if its a root OKR.
Quarter is inherited from the parent objective if its the KR.
Can one change the quarter of a KR? Yes
Changing of quarter retains all current status, progress and activity log of the OKR
Changing Quarter
Do we allow change of quarter of an OKR for MVP? Yes
When a quarter is changed for an objective, should we carry forward all the KRs below it to the next quarter? Depends on view
Should we maintain the child OKR in the current quarter even when it’s quarter is changed? Yes
The objective whose quarter is changed, does that become a dangling objective in the next quarter? No, it retains its alignment
Should we show the quarter for each OKR? Probably yes. Maybe only show quarter for anything that is outside the current quarter.
Can the timeline/quarter of a KR be changed independent of its parent? Yes, but we maintain it in the original quarter but it shows the latest version and not the previous version.
During reflection phase, few OKRs have been moved to other quarters. Do we make a copy of these as we need to show them in both quarters? Also, for OKRs being progressed in this quarter, if I look back in old quarter do we keep the version history in terms of status and progress or the current one? Yes, but we maintain it in the original quarter but it shows the latest version and not the previous version.
Accepting/declining of an OKR
If a user declines an OKR, its ownership goes back to the parent
What is the difference between declining and dropping once an OKR has been accepted? Declining changes the ownership, dropping changes the status to dropped. Declining means actively saying that you don’t accept to work on it. Dropping is used to indicate that you worked on it but won’t/can’t work on it further due to any circumstances, after the quarter started. Declining can be a time bound option that is not available after the progress % moves.
Will we have an archive section that contains all declined OKRs, to be revived/reviewed at a later point? No for now
Status and Progress
Status of OKRs can be —
1 status to show work not started yet
2 status to show active work
On-track
Off-track
2 status to show stopped work
Achieved
Dropped
Does updating a KR automatically also update the progress of the parent objective? Can this be a configurable setting? No
Status for self-owned KR is at initial value (0%, on-track). Whereas a non-self owner will see an Accept/Decline prompt and the creator will see Awaiting/Declined status
Text
What will happen to the progress bar if someone changes the Objective mid-quarter? We do not have a dynamic linking to changing status or progress. User has to manually update these. We need to nudge the user to update the progress bar whenever:
there is a change in text of objective
there is a status change
Owner
If the owner of an objective is changed mid-quarter (>0% progress), assuming it triggers the accept/decline flow, what does the new assignee see in the status area? New assignee can open OKR details to see status or we redesign the status area to accommodate both options.
Team(s)
Status and Progress
Quarter
Type
An independent objective of an admin can be changed to company objectives in next quarter and vice-versa: a company objective can be made an independent objective next quarter i.e the following tree becomes non-aligned. No other case exists until we allow uplinking.
Completing an OKR
What happens when an OKR is completed? Completed can be a status rather than a menu action.We will use achieved as the status. An OKR with achieved status will be given a distinct visual treatment to indicate that special status. But from a functional standpoint, user can still perform all standard actions on it.
Labeled as completed? Yes
Can it be updated? Yes
Can the owner be changed? Yes
Deleting an OKR
Following cases exist:
Labels on an OKR
Type
Label Content
Trigger action
Expiry event
Label
Company objective/ Non-aligned objective
OKR creation
None; Until the trigger happens again
Info text
Awaiting response from "user"
OKR assignment to non-creator
When the owner accepts/rejects; Case: When owner changes from one user to another; Label will get updated.
Info text
"User" declined this objective
Owner rejects an objective
When first update happens on this OKR
Label
Moved to quarter "xyz 2019"/ "Quarter x"
Quarter is changed for an OKR
Once the new quarter starts/ moved quarter = current quarter
Miscellaneous
How does an OKR deep link look like? (Finalise and put here)
We will update the activity panel to make it more like an OKR details page. That can serve as a permalink for that OKR unit. Potential solution.
Up-linking OKRs (Non MVP for now)
All tools have uplinking and we have strong use-cases for building this:
When someone deletes objectives; KR’s become orphans and could be linked upwards
When creating objectives, it might not be strictly top-down
How does uplinking an objective work? Should we have a similar accept/decline flow like we do in the assign owner flow? What does this look like? Will be part of MVP based on tech bandwidth.
Parallel Editing of OKRs
What happens when two people are editing the same OKRs at same time? Who ever saves first will be allowed and the other person will be shown an error msg saying the OKR was updated. Kindly check and take the necessary action.
OKR Duplication
Can an OKR be duplicated? No for now
OKR Expansion
Can user expand all the OKR units with one click eg., EXPAND ALL? No, we won’t have that many levels, however we might need it for All objective view and hence be consistent across views. For MVP we chose to expand one by one.
Appendix
Diagram: 1
Diagram: 2
Diagram: 3
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