How to Set Product OKRs (With Examples)
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) align product teams around outcomes rather than outputs. The objective describes what you want to achieve. The key results measure whether you achieved it. Done well, OKRs create focus and accountability. Done poorly, they become bureaucratic overhead.
This guide covers how to write OKRs that actually drive product decisions, with real examples.
Step-by-step guide
Step 1: Write objectives as qualitative aspirations
Objectives should be qualitative and inspirational: "Make onboarding effortless for new users" not "Increase onboarding completion to 80%." The number belongs in the key results. Objectives should make the team excited about the goal, not just aware of the target.
Step 2: Write key results as measurable outcomes
Each key result should be specific, measurable, and time-bound. Good: "Increase onboarding completion rate from 55% to 75% by end of quarter." Bad: "Improve onboarding." Each objective should have 2-4 key results that collectively indicate success.
Step 3: Focus on outcomes, not outputs
"Ship 5 features" is an output. "Reduce time-to-first-value from 10 minutes to 3 minutes" is an outcome. OKRs should measure what changes for users, not what the team produces. This keeps the focus on impact rather than busywork.
Step 4: Set stretch targets
OKRs should be ambitious: achieving 70% of a key result should feel like success. If you consistently hit 100% of your OKRs, they are not ambitious enough. The stretch pushes the team to find creative solutions rather than doing the obvious.
Step 5: Limit the number of OKRs
2-3 objectives with 2-4 key results each. That is 4-12 things to track. More than that dilutes focus. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
Step 6: Review weekly, not quarterly
Update key result progress weekly. A 5-minute review in the team standup keeps OKRs alive. Quarterly-only reviews turn OKRs into post-mortem exercises rather than steering tools.
Common mistakes
Key results as tasks
"Launch the redesigned checkout page" is a task, not a key result. It measures output, not outcome. The key result should be the impact: "Increase checkout conversion from 60% to 72%." The redesigned checkout page is the initiative you hypothesize will achieve the key result.
Too many OKRs
Teams with 5 objectives and 5 key results each are tracking 25 things. This is not focus; it is a task list. Limit to 2-3 objectives maximum. Force prioritization.
Sandbagging targets
Setting easy targets that you know you will hit defeats the purpose of OKRs. Stretch targets should feel uncomfortable. Achieving 70% of an ambitious target is better than achieving 100% of an easy one.
No connection to daily work
If OKRs are set in a quarterly meeting and never referenced in sprint planning or daily standups, they are theater. Connect every sprint to an OKR: "This sprint, we are working on features X and Y, which contribute to KR2 of Objective 1."
Tips
- Write OKRs bottom-up (team proposes) and align top-down (leadership validates)
- Include one "learning" OKR per quarter: a key result focused on validating a hypothesis rather than hitting a number
- Grade OKRs at the end of each quarter and discuss what you learned from misses
- Share OKRs publicly within the organization so teams can see alignment
How Vantage helps
Vantage connects roadmap items and PRDs to strategic objectives. When creating projects, the AI grounds generation in the context of your team's goals. OKR-relevant analytics data can be queried through the query engine to track progress toward key results.