4 customisable OKR examples for Practical Application

What are Practical Application OKRs?

The Objective and Key Results (OKR) framework is a simple goal-setting methodology that was introduced at Intel by Andy Grove in the 70s. It became popular after John Doerr introduced it to Google in the 90s, and it's now used by teams of all sizes to set and track ambitious goals at scale.

Creating impactful OKRs can be a daunting task, especially for newcomers. Shifting your focus from projects to outcomes is key to successful planning.

We've tailored a list of OKRs examples for Practical Application to help you. You can look at any of the templates below to get some inspiration for your own goals.

If you want to learn more about the framework, you can read our OKR guide online.

Building your own Practical Application 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 Practical Application OKRs examples

You will find in the next section many different Practical Application Objectives and Key Results. We've included strategic initiatives in our templates to give you a better idea of the different between the key results (how we measure progress), and the initiatives (what we do to achieve the results).

Hope you'll find this helpful!

1. OKRs to enhance leadership skills through online learning and practical application

2. OKRs to enhance tech lead abilities by utilizing online learning and practical application

3. OKRs to achieve mastery in advanced analytics tools

4. OKRs to acquire advanced Data Science skills

Practical Application 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 Practical Application OKRs in a strategy map

Quarterly OKRs should have weekly updates to get all the benefits from the 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 Practical Application OKR templates

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

• OKRs to enhance Developer Quality
  developer-qualitycross-functional-teamsteam-memberscode-review-teamtechnical-teamproject-team
• OKRs to boost asset retention and expansion in vital segments
  asset-retentiontargeted-segmentsstrategy-analystmarketing-specialiststrategy-teammarketing-team
• OKRs to scale product offering with multi-tenant apps
  multi-tenant-appscustomer-base-expansionproject-team-leadmarketing-strategistmarketing-teamapp-development-team
• OKRs to implement Human Centric Design in our SaaS business
  human-centric-designuser-satisfactiondesign-teamproject-management-teamdesignproject-teams
• OKRs to increase SEO by addressing all broken links
  search-engine-optimizationbroken-link-fixingseo-specialistweb-developerweb-developmentseo-team
• OKRs to successfully build a simple React app
  react-applicationsoftware-bugsreact-developersoftware-testerdevelopment-teamquality-assurance-team

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