GitHub - joelparkerhenderson/smart-okrs: SMART OKRs: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timely + Objectives and Key Results

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SMART OKRs

SMART OKRs combines the strengths of Specific Measurable Actionable Relatable Timely (SMART) for goal planning and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for management planning.

SMART for goal planning:

  • Specific: target one area clearly, precisely, and explicitly.
  • Measurable: quantify progress toward success by using metrics.
  • Actionable: able to start, sustain, and complete; achievable.
  • Relatable: causally and logically connected; relevant.
  • Timely: occurring at a time that is favorable, reservable, and bounded.

OKRs for management planning:

  • Objective: what we want to achieve, as a one-sentence summary.
  • Key Result: how we make progress and measure it with metrics.

SMART OKRs are the best way that I've found so far for working with teams in larger organizations. I welcome constructive feedback, issues, requests, and email. You can read many comments.

Examples

These examples show how to write a SMART bullet point. You can these examples to create your own SMART objective and SMART key results.

Growth examples:

  • Improve {topic} by {x%} during {timeframe}. Measure by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Increase {value} from {x} to {y} by {date}. Measure by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Grow {amount} by {n} steps by {deadline}. Measure by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

Scoreboard examples:

  • Boost {topic} score by {x%} during {timeframe}. Score by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Raise rating of {topic} from {x} to {y} by {date}. Score by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Achieve {n} points by {deadline}. Score by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

Capability examples:

  • Run {process} for {purpose} during {timeframe}. Track by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Launch {feature} for {benefit} on {date}. Track by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Complete {task} for {initiative} by {deadline}. Track by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

Singular examples:

  • Evaluate {choices} for {purpose} during {timeframe} and pick winner. Confirm by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Present {topic} to {people} on {date} at {place}. Confirm by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Get {item} because {reason} by {deadline}. Confirm by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

People examples:

  • Interview {n} customers for {purpose} during {timeframe} and report results. Quantify by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Ensure {n} partners are coming to {event} on {date}. Quantify by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Manage {n} employees to accomplish {task} by {deadline}. Quantify by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

Process examples:

  • Achieve lead time of {duration} during {timeframe}. Time by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Fire-drill time to restore {n} times on {date}. Time by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

  • Accelerate service rate from {x} to {y} by {deadline}. Time by {metric}. SMART: {details}.

Quickstart

For a quickstart, here's a quick template and quick example. You can see many more examples further down on this page.

SMART OKR template

Objective: {Do this action} {about this topic} {for this amount} {in this time frame}. {Measure by metric}. {Add any SMART details if more info is needed}.

Key Result: {output/outcome/impact}. {measure by}. {SMART details if more info is needed}.

Action examples:

  • increase / decrease
  • speed up / slow down
  • create / delete
  • add / remove
  • start / finish
  • phase in / phase out
  • upsize / downsize
  • manage / direct / organize / orchestrate

Topic examples:

  • customer satisfaction
  • employee happiness
  • stakeholder engagement
  • product price / quality / availability
  • financial revenue / earnings / profits
  • return on investment (ROI)
  • total cost of ownership (TCO)
  • daily active users (DAU)
  • advertising impressions / clicks / views
  • delivery pick-ups / drop-offs
  • on-time arrivals / departures
  • service success rate / throughput / uptime
  • DORA deployment frequency / lead time / failure rate / recovery time
  • Halstead complexity volume / difficulty / effort

Amount examples:

  • from x to y
  • from 0 to 5 stars
  • from red status to green status
  • by x times / percent / probability
  • achieving 4 sigma / 5 sigma / 6 sigma

Time range examples:

  • by x date
  • between x date and y date
  • before x date t time / after x date t time
  • in calendar week 1 / calendar quarter 1 / calendar year 2026
  • in fiscal week 1 / fiscal quarter 2 / fiscal year 2026

Measure examples:

  • Net Promoter Score
  • satisfaction survey
  • marketing survey
  • impressions
  • web analytics
  • inbound lead count
  • clicks
  • Likert scale
  • GAAP
  • customer relationship manager (CRM) analytics
  • enterprise resource planning (ERP) analytics
  • software engineering (SWE) source code metrics

SMART OKR example

Objective: Improve sales by 10%+ during calendar year 2026. Measure by weekly revenue. SMART: We have two sales channels, which are web sales and phone sales. We intend to track each channel as its own key result because this helps us when we run channel-specific experiments in each channel.

Key Result 1: Web sales up 5%+. Measure by weekly revenue coming directly to our website. SMART: To make this actionable, we need to create a web analytics step to track revenue per week, then show it in our web dashboard.

Key Result 2: Phone sales up 5%+. Measure by weekly revenue coming to our phone staff. SMART: This is relevant to our customer satisfaction initiatives, because we want our phone staff to ask one question about satisfaction "How satisfied are you with our products, on a scale of one to ten, where ten is best?".

SMART

Specific

Target one area clearly, precisely, and explicitly.

Questions that may help:

  • Scope: What is in scope versus out of scope?
  • Functionality: What are the inputs, people, processes, and outputs?
  • Understanding: What is the terminology, ubiquitous language, etc.?
  • Results: What are any objectives, outcomes, impacts?
  • Phrasing: Can you use positive phrases and action verbs?

Measurable

Quantify progress toward success by using metrics.

Questions that may help:

  • What metrics are being used and why?
  • How do measurements help manage the work and improve it?
  • What are the key performance indicators?
  • What are any leading indicators and lagging indicators?
  • How do various stakeholders access the metrics?

Actionable

Achievable and able to start, sustain, and complete.

Questions that may help:

  • Who is working on this? List any roles, responsibilities, participants, etc.
  • What resources are needed? List any inputs, materials, budgets, approvals, etc.
  • How are the challenges? List any risks, assumptions, issues, dependencies, etc.

Relatable

Causally and logically connected; relevant.

Questions that may help:

  • Can you summarize the purpose, rationale, etc.?
  • Can you summarize the context, connections, etc.?
  • How does this relate to the participants, their roles, and goals?
  • How does this interconnect with other work, such as positively or negatively?
  • Can you describe the impact, in terms that relate to adjacent goals and plans?

Timely

Occurring at a time that is favorable, reservable, and bounded.

Questions that may help:

  • When does this start and finish? For example with dates, or weeks, or months?
  • Why use this timing over others? For example a fixed duration or a deadline?
  • How is the time reserved? For example allocated, scheduled, budgeted, etc.?
  • Where can participants see a timeline, or calendar, or schedule, etc.?
  • How do you track the time spent versus the work in progress?
  • Is there anything important that happens before this or after this?

OKRs

What are OKRs?

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results.

OKR is a method of defining objectives and tracking their outcomes:

  • The Objective: what we want to achieve

  • The Key Results: subparts that help us track how we're making progress

Purpose:

  • OKRs connect objectives of organizations to teams to individuals, to improve organizational alignment.

  • OKRs connect objectives to measurements, to improve evidence-based decision making and reduce bias.

  • OKRs connect objectives to plans, to help each person build their professional development plan.

Ground rules:

  • OKRs and their metrics are visible to the whole organization by default. This helps coworkers understand what everyone is doing, and thus how to work together toward goals.

  • OKRs are aspirational and inspirational, thus not used for formal performance reviews nor compensation. This helps coworkers understand that OKRs are for motivation and not.

What is an objective?

Your objective should be inspirational. It should provide a sense of meaning and progress. You want objectives to be ambitious enough to push you beyond your limits. Skip anything small such as a minimal percentage gain.

When everyone does this, it motivates deep conversations about what's truly needed for expectations. The conversations can start with why you are choosing this objective over any other?

Your objective should be truly yours. You can’t have any excuse such as "That other team didn't do their work." You can't have any excuse such as "That other team didn't measure it."

Your objective is best when it is relatable to your broader work, such as your organization's vision statement, mission statement, values statement, and strategy statement.

What is a key result?

Key results take the inspirational and provide specific evidence. Each key result should be based on a simple question “how do we know we're making progress toward the objective?”

Typically you have 2 or 3 key results, or more for larger objectives.