Second edition now out

OKRs are about goals bigger than the next story.

OKRs prioritise purpose and strategy over backlogs. Objectives are big goals; key results are constraints, success criteria, maybe small pieces of the bigger thing.

Does your agile team get lead astray by burning fires? Do you struggle to keep your agile team focused?

Do you feel the need for more than just doing the top of the backlog every two weeks?

Are you using, or want to use, OKRs with an agile team?

Then this is the book for you. Acclaimed author Allan Kelly has written a short guide to OKRs, writing them, organizing to deliver and the pitfalls.

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Allan is the author of multiple books on agile and has given advice and training for over 10 years. Now he turns his attention to OKRs.

In this book he doesn't try to sell OKRs - others can tell you why OKRs are great. Allan describes his practical experience working with an agile team adopting OKRs, day-by-day, quarter-by-quarter.

Allan’s advice includes: be really specific in setting goals, involve the whole team in setting OKRs, think broad when setting then execute narrowly, set analogue not binary OKRs and, most controversially, throw away your backlog and let OKRs drive everything you do.

Initially sceptical about OKRs Allan found them a good fit with agile; OKRs became an effective means of focus teams, exposing problems, communicating with senior managers and a powerful means of asking bigger questions about product strategy and value.

OKRs and agile work well together because they are both outcome oriented and results focused. When used right OKRs give power and authority to teams - one could even say OKRs create test first management.

Yet OKR can be a double edge-sword, used poorly they can re-introduce command-and-control and hinder agile working. Allan addresses problems with predictability, aspirations, culture, targets and annual reviews.