The following personal Objectives and Key Results (OKR) are a potential set to help you achieve positive results.

The priority order will depend on you and the business 🙂

Objective 1 – We are building the team we need

Understand if and how to grow your team to materially increase your productivity as an organisation.

  1. I have identified the key roles we need to meet our objectives
  2. I have created Position Descriptions for our hiring needs
  3. I have reached out to people in my direct network that satisfy our hiring needs
  4. I have a communication strategy for going to broader community to satisfy our hiring needs

Objective 2 – We are delivering value efficiently and have a plan for continuous improvement

Make sure you are providing customer value efficiently, and continually improving the way you do so.

  1. I have talked to the key stakeholder in all the functions of the business to identify pain points and bottlenecks
  2. I have documented a tactical plan to improve our delivery efficiency
  3. I have documented a strategic plan to improve our delivery efficiency
  4. I have documented system-of-work sensible defaults for continuous improvement

Objective 3 – We have a budget plan

Ensuring you understand any budget constraints so you can make good decisions on any spend.

  1. I have visibility of the budget
  2. I can track our spend against our budget
  3. I have documented a plan on how we use our budget to materially increase our value proposition

Objective 4 – We have engineering function Objectives and Key Results

Plan for the future and build a language for talking about what you want to achieve as a business.

  1. I understand the business case
  2. I understand our commercial Objectives and Key Results
  3. I have documented the engineering function strategic Objectives and Key Results for the next quarter

Objective 5 – We have a ubiquitous language to align with the broader business

Ensure you and your new peers are using the same words with similar interpretations.

  1. I have identified the functions in the business
  2. I have identified the key stakeholder in all the functions of the business
  3. I have an agenda for meeting with key stakeholders in all the functions of the business
  4. I have talked to the key stakeholder for all the functions of the business to capture the language used
  5. I have documented a ubiquitous language

Objective 6 – We have a defined set of cultural norms and values

Understand how your new peers work and live their lives so you can align, build relationships and motivate peeps.

  1. I have discussed cultural norms and values with everyone in the engineering function
  2. I have discussed cultural norms and values with the key stakeholder for all the functions in the business
  3. I have documented our vision
  4. I have documented our values
  5. I have documented our cultural norms
  6. I have made our engineering function cultural norms and values visible to the broader business

Objective 7 – We understand the architecture and technology to utilise to meet our objectives

As an engineering leader you care about the technology. Find out what is being used and what is being looked at for the future.

  1. I understand what technology we are using for what currently
  2. I have talked to key technologists in the business to get a view of the technology we want to investigate for the future

So what might it actually look like?

Well, I like to use Trello to capture and communicate progress on things 🙂

I use the Scaled power-up and have the Objectives setup as epics with the Key Results being the tasks associated.

Sample Personal OKR in Trello