“What gets measured gets managed.” – Peter Drucker
This famous quote by management consultant Peter Drucker encapsulates the importance of setting measurable goals and objectives in any organization or personal venture. In today’s fast-paced business world, OKR (Objectives and Key Results) has emerged as a powerful framework to set, measure, and achieve those goals. But how do you measure the success of your OKRs?
In this blog, we will explore the ins and outs of OKR Scoring, how to score OKRs, and how to effectively track progress toward your objectives.
What is OKR Scoring
OKR Scoring is the process by which businesses evaluate the extent to which they’ve achieved their OKRs. It provides a quantitative measure that gives insights into the progress made toward objectives, making it easier for teams and individuals to reflect, adjust, and strategize for future performance.
In its essence, OKR Scoring helps answer two primary questions:
- How well are we progressing towards our objective?
- Did we achieve the key results we set out to accomplish?
When to Score OKRs
Three times during a quarterly OKR cycle is the ideal number of times to grade OKRs. whenever the team conducts its monthly reviews.
Since they plan annually, businesses like LinkedIn and Google might evaluate OKRs less frequently. They might not use OKR scoring in their quarterly retrospectives, in other words.
However, scoring OKRs during your monthly OKR review works best within the OKR cycle for smaller businesses and those who are new to the OKR methodology. Teams can use this time to become accustomed to the procedure, identify what’s working and what isn’t, and make adjustments earlier in the OKR cycle.
How Do You Score OKRs
Scoring OKRs is essential to gauge the progress and understand how closely objectives are being met. The score provides a numerical representation of the performance.
Here’s how you can score OKRs
1. The 0-1.0 Scale
The most common way to score OKRs is on a scale of 0 to 1.0, with 0 indicating no progress and 1.0 signifying that the key result is fully achieved. Anything above 0.7 is typically considered good progress. Alternatively, one can simplify the scale even further by only using colors and emojis.
- 0.7 to 1.0: Green = We delivered.
- 0.4 to 0.6: Yellow = We have made progress, but fell short of completion.
- 0.0 to 0.3: Red = We failed to make any real progress.