Aligning product and engineering OKRs
Set shared goals through impact and capacity balance instead of roadmap dates.
Product brings impact and revenue goals; engineering brings capacity and risk. I bridge the two languages with a measurable outcome plus a technical constraint in the same sentence.
3 rules
- Make capacity explicit: Cap team throughput using the last three iterations’ average; when adding new work, remove the same amount.
- Expose risks: Add architectural debt or scaling needs as their own KRs; measure progress with acceptance criteria.
- Count experiments: Make validation steps (A/B, MVP, launch plan) as visible as shipped features.
Sample OKR
- Objective: Increase customer activation while keeping platform stability.
- KR1: Grow activation rate from 15% → 20% (measure: weekly cohort).
- KR2: Cut signup→first value from 24h to 12h.
- KR3: Keep P99 API latency < 400ms, error rate < 0.2%.
- KR4: Define error budget and SLO for the riskiest module; publish the dashboard.
Cadence
- 30-minute “input check” before sprint planning to map OKRs/KRs to the new work list.
- For large items, write RFC → decision → implementation; define who approves.
- End of sprint: two slides only—metrics graphs + technical debt decisions.