Align OKRs with Your Product Roadmap for User-Driven Growth

Are your product development efforts somewhat disconnected from your business goals? Alternatively, you could prioritise features without a clear understanding of how they contribute to those objectives.

Moreover, the lack of alignment between product teams and other departments, such as marketing and sales, can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

This is where OKRs and product roadmaps come in. Understanding their differences and how they complement each other can bridge the gap between your product and what your customers want.

This blog will uncover actionable strategies for integrating them effectively, accompanied by practical examples and a real-world case study.

What is the role of OKRs in a product roadmap?

OKRs are a guiding framework within a product roadmap, ensuring teams stay focused on strategic objectives while navigating the development process. An OKR roadmap keeps you on track by combining strategic goals with tangible milestones.

Objectives set the overarching goals, such as increasing user engagement or launching new features, while Key Results outline specific, measurable steps to achieve these objectives.

This alignment fosters collaboration, drives focus, and enables agile decision-making, ultimately leading to more successful product launches and achieving business objectives through a clear OKR roadmap.

How are OKRs and product roadmaps different?

“OKRs show your team the right strategic direction for your product and business growth so that your product roadmap and development efforts are focused and well-collaborated.” Gaurav Sabharwal, CEO of JOP.

You get a high-level view of what needs to be achieved by using OKRs, which help your teams align their efforts toward common objectives. You can use them to set crucial business goals and track measurable outcomes, which are essential components of any strong OKR roadmap.

Product roadmaps help you create detailed plans outlining the features, enhancements, and timelines for product development. You make a strategy for executing tasks and delivering specific product functionalities.

The OKRs for the company may include objectives such as increasing customer engagement and enhancing product performance.

The key results would outline specific metrics, such as increasing the number of active users by 20% or reducing app loading time by 30%. These OKRs provide a strategic direction for the entire organisation to work towards common goals and form the core of an OKR roadmap.

The product roadmap for a specific software product within the company would detail the features, enhancements, and timeline for its development.

For example, the product roadmap might include milestones like releasing a new user interface design in quarter one, implementing a new payment gateway in quarter two, and launching a mobile app version in quarter three.

This roadmap guides the product development team on the sequential steps required to bring the product to market, aligning with the broader objectives outlined in the OKRs. Together, they form a cohesive OKR roadmap.

Why OKRs cannot replace product roadmaps?

You cannot replace goals with an execution plan for a team. Similarly, OKRs and product roadmaps serve different purposes and provide complementary perspectives on product development. For instance, let’s consider a real-life scenario in a software company.

The company’s OKRs may include objectives such as increasing customer satisfaction and expanding market reach. The KRs would define measurable outcomes such as achieving a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 70 or growing sales revenue by 20%.

While OKRs provide a high-level direction for the organisation, they lack the detailed roadmap necessary for product development. This is where product roadmaps come in. By linking the two in an OKR roadmap, companies get the best of both worlds.

A product roadmap for a specific software product within the company would outline the features, enhancements, and timeline for its development.

For example, it might detail the release of new features like a chatbot integration in Q1, a social media sharing feature in Q2, and an analytics dashboard in Q3 to achieve the KR of higher NPS score.

Product roadmaps provide a tactical plan for executing tasks and delivering specific product functionalities while ensuring alignment with the broader objectives set by OKRs.

Using OKRs to make a customer-centric product roadmap

As a product company, almost every product development initiative is taken up from user feedback and behavioural insights.

You should create meaningful customer-centric OKRs and align the product team with them to guide and prioritise things in your product roadmap. This creates a customer-focused OKR roadmap that drives real impact.

1. Define your product vision and priorities

To start, gather inputs from various stakeholders. Engage with key players across departments, including product managers, developers, marketers, salespeople, and customers.

Their insights will provide a holistic view of what’s essential for the product’s success and for shaping your OKR roadmap.

The next step is to analyse and prioritise features. One realistic example of a priority could be improving the onboarding process for new users.

This could involve streamlining the signup flow, providing helpful tutorials, and ensuring a smooth transition into using the product. This feature is often a high priority, as it directly impacts the user experience (UX) and can influence long-term retention rates.

Another example could be enhancing the product’s performance and scalability. If stakeholders have identified issues with slow load times or system crashes during peak usage periods, prioritise improvements in essential areas.

It’s crucial to align these priorities with the overarching product vision and company goals. For instance, if the company focuses on expanding into new markets, we may need to prioritise features that support internationalisation or localisation efforts, all integrated into the OKR roadmap.

2. Create the OKRs for product

Once you have a good grasp of everyone’s perspectives, you can align your product roadmap to business goals and define OKRs to measure success. These then serve as the foundation of your OKR roadmap.

Now, let’s dive into crafting KRs to measure your progress toward achieving this Objective.

These KRs should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For instance:

• Increase Net Promoter Score (NPS) from 7 to 8 by the end of the quarter.
• Reduce customer support response time from 24 hours to 12 hours within six months.
• Achieve a customer retention rate of 90% by the end of the year.

These key results provide tangible metrics that indicate whether you are making progress toward your Objective of enhancing user satisfaction and retention.

To validate these OKRs, it’s essential to discuss them with all the OKR owners, ensuring alignment and buy-in across the team. 

Now, let’s see how this OKR connects with the product roadmap.

For example, if one of your KRs is to increase NPS from 7 to 8, you can identify features and improvements in the product roadmap that directly contribute to improving user satisfaction.

This could include enhancing user interface design, implementing requested features, or optimising performance to provide a smoother user experience—all of which would be part of your OKR roadmap.

Write all of your company and team OKRs and follow the OKR best practices to create them. For instance, don’t create more than 3-5 company objectives, each with 3-5 KRs.

3. Align every contributor with the product roadmap using OKRs

Once you have gathered the team’s inputs, you can create cross-functional OKRs that align with other team members with the product vision and overarching OKRs.

For example, let’s consider the marketing team. Their role in the go-to-market plan is crucial for the product’s success. You can create an Objective for them, such as “Drive Product Awareness and Adoption,” which aligns with the broader product vision.

Now, let’s define KRs that will measure their contribution towards this Objective:

• Increase website traffic by 20% within three months through targeted content marketing campaigns
• Generate 500 new leads per month through inbound marketing efforts.
• Achieve a 10% increase in product sign-ups within six months through optimised landing pages and conversion rate optimisation
  

These KRs provide tangible metrics that indicate whether the marketing team is effectively aligning their efforts with the product roadmap and contributing towards achieving the product’s goals as defined in the OKR roadmap.

It’s crucial to ensure that these cross-functional OKRs are communicated clearly and transparently across the organisation.

By creating cross-functional OKRs and aligning team members with the product roadmap, you can ensure that everyone is working towards common goals and driving the product’s success through a unified OKR roadmap.

4. Make OKRs transparent with a proper tool

To start, gather inputs from your team to understand their needs and preferences regarding OKR software. You want to ensure that your chosen tool is efficient, intuitive, and aligns with your organization’s workflow.

Once you have a clear understanding of your requirements, you can explore various OKR software options available in the market. Some popular tools include Joy of Performing (JOP),  Profit.co, Workboard, etc.

These platforms offer features such as goal-setting, progress tracking, task management, and collaboration tools, making it easier for teams to align their efforts with the product roadmap and OKRs.

When selecting a tool, consider factors such as user-friendliness, integration capabilities, scalability, and cost. It’s essential to choose a tool that not only meets your current needs but also has the flexibility to grow with your organization as it scales.

Once you identify the right OKR software, you will onboard your team and provide training to ensure everyone is comfortable using the tool.

5. Stay agile with your OKRs based on the user feedback

Staying agile with your OKRs based on user feedback is essential for ensuring that your product remains aligned with customer needs and continues to deliver value as outlined in your OKR roadmap.

To begin, gather input from your team to understand the current state of your OKRs and identify any areas that may require refinement based on user feedback.

Once you have gathered these inputs, you can review progress regularly and gather customer feedback to inform adjustments to the product roadmap and OKR tools.

This could involve conducting surveys, interviews, or user testing sessions to gather insights directly from your customers. 

Based on this feedback, you may need to refine your OKRs to better align with customer needs and priorities, while keeping your OKR roadmap up to date and responsive.

Once you have refined your OKRs, continue to review progress and gather feedback regularly.

Examples of product roadmap OKRs

These OKR examples for a product are relevant to a B2B SaaS company’s product roadmap, including contributors from the Product, Sales, and Marketing teams.

Objective 1: Improve new user onboarding

Due date: 9 months

Owners: Product Manager, Growth Manager, and UX/UI Designer

Key results:

• Reduce time to first value by 20% (measured by onboarding completion rates)
• Increase activation rate from 50% to 70% within first 7 days (measured by MAU/NAU)
• Decrease drop-off rate during onboarding process by 15% (measured by user progression through onboarding steps)

Objective 2: Increase paid conversion

Due date: 12 months

Owners: VP Marketing, VP Sales, and Product Manager

Key results:

• Improve free to paid conversion rate from 5% to 8%
• Increase trial to paid conversion rate from 15% to 20%
• Implement A/B testing on pricing page to increase conversion by 10% (measured by conversion rate of visitors to pricing page)

Objective 3: Enhance core workflow

Due date: 9 months

Owners: Engineering Manager, Customer Success Manager, and Support Manager

Key results:

• Implement top 3 most requested workflow improvements from user interviews
• Decrease support tickets related to workflow issues by 30%
• Reduce average time to resolve workflow-related support tickets by 20%

Objective 4: Expand integrations

Due date: 12 months

Owners: Partner Manager, Product Manager, and Customer Success Manager

Key results:

• Launch integration with the top CRM tool
• Double the number of active third-party integrations from 5 to 10
• Achieve a 90% customer satisfaction rating for new integrations (measured by post-launch surveys)

Advantages the OKRs bring to the product roadmap

1. Enhanced transparency

Your teams can easily track their progress toward OKRs, understand how their work contributes to broader goals, and identify areas for collaboration and support.

2. Clarity on priorities

Your teams gain a clear understanding of the company’s most important objectives, enabling better alignment and focus across the organisation.

3. Purpose and motivation

Empower your team by providing a clear sense of purpose and connecting their work directly to the value they deliver to product users.

4. Increased focus

You can align the entire company around critical objectives and ensure everyone works towards common priorities by using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

5. Alignment to goals and product roadmap

Enable your teams to see how their work aligns with strategic objectives and ensure that their tasks and initiatives contribute directly to overarching goals.

6. Better measurement and feedback on performance

OKRs provide a framework for quantitatively measuring impact and achievement within the business.

By setting measurable key results (KRs), teams can track progress objectively and receive clear feedback on their performance.

7. Improved agility

Teams can quickly pivot and realign their objectives in response to shifting priorities or market conditions, ensuring that resources are effectively allocated and efforts remain focused on achieving strategic outcomes.

Case study: Using OKRs to scale the product at Prezi

This case study will help you understand how using OKRs can aid a team in driving innovation and growing a customer-centric product. We picked this story from whatmatters.com

Prezi, a video and visual communications software company, was started in 2009 by Peter Arvai, Péter Halácsy, and Adam Somlai-Fischer.

Prezi has over 100 million users and serves Fortune 1000 companies and startups. The company evolved during the pandemic, expanding its offerings and user base and transitioning from a startup to an established firm with enhanced tools.

Goals and Challenges of Prezi

Jim Szafranski became the CEO of Prezi in 2020. Prezi has used OKRs since 2016. As a COO, Jim introduced them to improve the company’s business practices.

When Jim joined, Prezi was transitioning to a new phase. The company’s main product was presentation software, primarily used in education and commercial businesses.

However, Prezi wanted to expand its user base and re-platform its product accordingly.

How did Prezi use OKRs to develop their product for success?

Product and marketing teams led the OKR initiatives with cross-functional managers as KR owners.

The OKR processes helped the company unite towards a common goal when they acquired Infogram. 

They aimed to create and launch a combined product called Prezi Design, which integrated Infogram’s value into the Prezi platform.

The seamless integration and coordination between the Prezi legacy team and the new Prezi (formerly Infogram) employees were crucial.

By setting a shared Objective and defining what success meant for the company, the team achieved their goal. 

The Key Results outlined the necessary user success and business outcomes for Prezi Design, which justified the effort put into the pre-acquisition Infogram product.

The OKR structure provided essential guidance for the team to collaborate and successfully develop and launch Prezi Design as an integrated solution.

Conclusion

You need both OKRs and product roadmaps to drive success in a product-based business. While they serve distinct purposes, they complement each other effectively, ensuring a well-rounded approach to product development and business growth.

For those new to OKRs, piloting it with your product team can be a transforming initiative. As you embark on this journey, be open to learning and adaptation, continually refining your product strategy through the use of OKRs.