Big Rocks

the more widespread a term is, the less it holds to its original purpose - Weasel's law #4

Someone surely has claimed or discussed this phenomenom before. It’s why people who claim Agile doesn’t work aren’t actually following (m)any rules of Agile. It’s why people who have never used story points don’t like story points, it’s why the term “AI” means seven different things to five different people, and it’s why OKRs are a disaster…

…for most teams.

Obligatory Intro

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are a goal setting framework that came out of Andy Grove’s work at Intel in the 1970s. He discusss them in High Output Management, and there are numerous books on using them - but only two good ones I know of - Grove’s book, and one other that I’ll get to later..

OKR Hate

I’m going to guess that you probably hate OKRs. If you’ve had the experience of most people, you probably have a good reason to hate OKRs. People typically have terrible experiences with OKRs because they were asked to create OKRs not knowing how to start or why they’re doing them. They’re dropped on the team like a…