OKR format for team goals

Contract

Enforces the Objective-and-Key-Results structure on every set of team or organization goals you draft for a quarter or year. Apply whenever the task is to write, restructure, or clean up a team's period goals; not for sprint task planning, project milestone schedules, or individual performance reviews.

Rules

1. One Objective per goal set. The Objective is a single qualitative, inspirational

statement of where the team is going this period — memorable, motivating, and short.

1. The Objective contains no numbers. No percentages, counts, times, or currency amounts

in the Objective line; every number lives in a Key Result. "Make every delivery something customers can count on" — not "Increase weekly deliveries 30%".

1. 3 to 5 Key Results per Objective. Fewer than three under-specifies what success means;

more than five means priorities have not been chosen.

1. Every Key Result is an outcome: a metric moving from a baseline to a target. Write the

metric name, its current value, and the value to reach — a from→to pair, e.g. "Rebuffering ratio from 1.8% to 0.6%". If the ask supplies current figures, use them as the baselines; never leave a Key Result as a bare direction like "improve latency".

1. Never a task, activity, or deliverable. "Launch", "ship", "migrate", "hire", "write",

"release" describe work, not results. The test: if the team did the activity and nothing changed in the metric, would you still call it success? Rewrite every task into the result the work is supposed to move:

Launch the loyalty program → Repeat-purchase rate from 18% to 26% Migrate search to the new engine → Search-to-purchase rate from 9% to 14% Hire three field technicians → Median install wait from 12 days to 5 days

1. State the scoring convention. Each Key Result is graded 0.0–1.0 at period end by

fractional progress toward its target. Landing around 0.7 on stretch targets counts as success; a routine 1.0 means the targets were sandbagged. Include a one-line scoring note with the goal set.

Worked example

BEFORE (task list — the default)
  Goals for the quarter:
  - Migrate the player to the new CDN
  - Reduce rebuffering
  - Ship the offline mode beta
  - Fix the top crash

AFTER (conforming)
  Objective: Make playback feel instant and uninterrupted, every time.

  Key Results:
  1. Rebuffering ratio from 1.8% to 0.6%
  2. Median video start time from 2.4s to 1.2s
  3. Playback-failure sessions from 0.9% to 0.3%
  4. Crash-free viewing sessions from 99.2% to 99.8%

  Scoring: each Key Result is graded 0.0–1.0 at quarter end; landing around
  0.7 on these stretch targets counts as success.

What changed: the CDN migration and offline beta are work items, not results — they only appear insofar as they move a listed metric; "reduce rebuffering" gained a baseline and a target; the Objective became one qualitative, number-free line.

Edge cases & exceptions

• No baseline is known → the ask usually supplies current figures; use them. If one truly

is unknown, make instrumenting it the first Key Result with its own numeric target date coverage (e.g. "Metric X instrumented and reporting for 100% of traffic"), then target it next period.

• A launch genuinely is the goal → keep the launch as work, and write the Key Result as

the adoption or quality outcome the launch must produce (users, conversion, error rate).

• Multiple teams or themes in one ask → one Objective each, with its own 3–5 Key Results;

do not pool eight Key Results under one vague umbrella Objective.

• Binary results → acceptable only when truly binary and outcome-shaped; prefer a

measured form so partial credit is gradable on the 0.0–1.0 scale.

• Committed vs stretch → if the set flags a Key Result as committed (contractual,

compliance), note that it is expected at 1.0; the ~0.7 norm applies to the stretch ones.

Do / Don't

• Do write exactly one qualitative Objective. Don't put a number in it.
• Do write 3–5 Key Results. Don't write one, two, or seven.
• Do give every Key Result a from→to metric pair. Don't write bare directions like "improve

uptime".

• Do phrase Key Results as results. Don't use launch/ship/migrate/hire/write as a Key Result.
• Do add the 0.0–1.0 scoring note with ~0.7 as the success mark. Don't imply 100% or nothing.

Common mistakes

• A flat bullet list of initiatives with no Objective/Key Result split — the default.
• Numbers in the Objective line; slogans in the Key Results.
• Key Results without baselines ("reach 99.9%" — from where?).
• Tasks dressed as Key Results ("Ship the redesign", "Complete the migration").
• Six or more Key Results under one Objective.
• No scoring convention, or success framed as all-or-nothing.

Quick checklist

• One Objective: qualitative, inspirational, zero numbers.
• 3–5 Key Results, each: metric name + baseline → target.
• No Key Result is a task, activity, or deliverable.
• Scoring note present: 0.0–1.0 at period end, ~0.7 = success on stretch targets.