OKRs from a development team’s perspective

Re:OKRs from a development team’s perspective by kenhwang on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:47PM (#20005148)

My company has been using OKRs for several years now and the author perfectly describes what the engineering team does. We scan through our backlog, slap some nice OKR tags on items that are vaguely relevant, and then ignore the OKRs until the next quarter. The more politically savvy members of the team then spin some BS to make everyone buy that the work engineering is doing actually supports the OKRs.

My personal opinions of OKRs are that it's possibly the most cumbersome form of waterfall without many of the few benefits of waterfall. It's really a tool for making leadership feel good about being bad at their job.

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Re:OKRs from a development team’s perspective by astral303 on Friday May 24, 2019 @04:51PM (#20005179)

I agree. OKRs are renamed MBOs. This is extrinsic motivation and a giant waste of time. At best, it’s a process-heavy priorities setting/strategizing mechanism. At worst, it causes unnecessary employee anxiety and distraction away from current business needs.

Any measurement that is a metric (goals in OKRs) will cease being a metric. It will be gamed.

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Re:OKRs from a development team’s perspective by Terretta on Friday May 24, 2019 @05:47PM (#20005581)

MBO and OKRs are not (supposed to be) the same methodology. Their proponents decades back were of opposing views on how to manage.

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