2 customisable OKR examples for Development Cycle

What are Development Cycle 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.

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 Development Cycle 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 Development Cycle 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.

Our customisable Development Cycle OKRs examples

We've added many examples of Development Cycle Objectives and Key Results, but we did not stop there. Understanding the difference between OKRs and projects is important, so we also added examples of strategic initiatives that relate to the OKRs.

Hope you'll find this helpful!

1. OKRs to enhance product quality by reducing production defects

Enhance product quality by reducing production defects
Decrease production defects by 30% through tightened quality control processes
Train staff on the new quality standards
Implement stringent quality control measures in the production line
Regularly inspect and update production equipment
Conduct training sessions for QA team to enhance in-depth product knowledge
Identify key product aspects for the QA team to understand deeply
Schedule and facilitate product knowledge training sessions
Develop comprehensive training materials/briefs for each aspect
Implement a new, more thorough testing protocol within the development cycle
Research and adopt a comprehensive testing method
Educate development team about new protocol
Identify the weak spots in the current testing protocol

Implement this OKR

2. OKRs to rapidly shorten time to revenue and time to market cycle

Rapidly shorten time to revenue and time to market cycle
Increase sales conversion rates by 10% with optimized marketing activities
Improve website layout for better user accessibility and engagement
Implement data-driven strategies to improve sales pitches
Develop targeted marketing campaigns for potential customers
Reduce product development cycle by 20% through process improvement
Implement lean practices for streamlined production
Identify inefficiencies in the current product development cycle
Measure effectiveness and refine adopted strategies
Implement expedited go-to-market strategy to deliver products 15% faster
Develop targeted and timely marketing campaigns
Enhance distribution channels for quicker delivery
Identify ways to streamline product development process

sales-conversion expedited-go-to-market marketing-manager product-development-manager sales-and-marketing product-development

Implement this OKR

Development Cycle 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 OKRs

Tip #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 transparency

Tip #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 Development Cycle 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

Spreadsheets are enough to get started. Then, once you need to scale you can use a proper OKR platform to make things easier.

Tability's Strategy Map makes it easy to see all your org's OKRs

If 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 Development Cycle OKR templates

We have more templates to help you draft your team goals and OKRs.

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

What's next? Try Tability's goal-setting AI

You can create an iterate on your OKRs using Tability's unique goal-setting AI.

Watch the demo below, then hop on the platform for a free trial.

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