okr-kpi-patterns

# OKR & KPI Patterns

Frameworks for defining goals, measuring success, and building metrics-driven organizations.

## OKR Framework

Objectives and Key Results align teams around ambitious goals with measurable outcomes.

### OKR Structure

```
Objective: Qualitative, inspiring goal
├── Key Result 1: Quantitative measure of progress
├── Key Result 2: Quantitative measure of progress
└── Key Result 3: Quantitative measure of progress
```

### Writing Good Objectives

| Characteristic | Good | Bad |
|---------------|------|-----|
| Qualitative | "Delight enterprise customers" | "Increase NPS to 50" |
| Inspiring | "Become the go-to platform" | "Ship 10 features" |
| Time-bound | Implied quarterly | Vague timeline |
| Ambitious | Stretch goal (70% achievable) | Sandbagged (100% easy) |

### Writing Good Key Results

| Characteristic | Good | Bad |
|---------------|------|-----|
| Quantitative | "Reduce churn from 8% to 4%" | "Improve retention" |
| Measurable | "Ship to 10,000 beta users" | "Launch beta" |
| Outcome-focused | "Increase conversion by 20%" | "Add 5 features" |
| Leading indicators | "Weekly active users reach 50K" | "Revenue hits $1M" (lagging) |

### OKR Example

```markdown
## Q1 2026 OKRs

### Objective 1: Become the #1 choice for enterprise teams

**Key Results:**
- KR1: Increase enterprise NPS from 32 to 50
- KR2: Reduce time-to-value from 14 days to 3 days
- KR3: Achieve 95% feature adoption in first 30 days
- KR4: Win 5 competitive displacements from [Competitor]

### Objective 2: Build a world-class engineering culture

**Key Results:**
- KR1: Reduce deploy-to-production time from 4 hours to 15 minutes
- KR2: Achieve 90% code coverage on critical paths
- KR3: Zero P0 incidents lasting longer than 30 minutes
- KR4: Engineering satisfaction score reaches 4.5/5
```

## Leading vs. Lagging Indicators

Understanding the difference is crucial for effective measurement.

### Definitions

| Type | Definition | Characteristics |
|------|------------|----