Kanban India 2022 www.kanbanindia.org

1. OKRs & Kanban
How to align KR outcomes and Kanban execution – Avinash Rao

2. Agenda
 Section 1: OKRs, outcomes and business agility
 And executing sub-KRs in Kanban
 Section 2: Modeling OKRs in Kanban
 … and why I’m not a fan of modeling OKRs as card hierarchies
 But how to do it effectively, anyway!

3. Section 1 OKRs, outcomes, and business agility

4. Activity v/s
Outcome

5. Ourexecutionsystemsprimarilytrack
effort
…Whilebusinesstracksoutcomes
Built1000tanksthisquarteris(I’msure)
someone’sKPIinthearmy…
Butthebusiness(Putin)caresabout–
howmuchterritorydidwetake?

6. What problem
doesOKRs
solve?
 We all met our targets, but we did not meet the outcomes
 The projects and initiatives delivered what they were supposed to
… but business metrics did not move

7. Lets take an
example
 Grow the business

8. Lets take an
example
 Revenue growth of 15%YOY
 (usually the most important – bonus deciding! – metric in the
company)

9. Lets take an
example
 Revenue growth of 15%YOY
 (usually the most important – bonus deciding! – metric in the
company)
 But not at the cost of lowering prices, right?

10. Lets take an
example
 Revenue growth of 15%YOY
 Retain margins at 25% net
 But what if we drive the team into the ground, and they quit?

11. This would be
a ‘Grow the
business’
Objective
Grow the business
 Revenue growth of 15%YOY
 Retain margins at 25% net
 Emp Sat of 80% + for the year

12. This, now, are
OKRs
Grow the business
 Revenue growth of 15%YOY
 Retain margins at 25% net
 Emp Sat of 80% + for the year
Objective
Key Results

13. You will notice,
that KRs are
outcome
measurements
(rarely modeled on
a Kanban board – a
revenuenumber is
not aValueStream)
Grow the business
 Revenue growth of 15%YOY
 Retain margins at 25% net
 Emp Sat of 80% + for the year

14. There is a
discontinuity
here (and
that’s a good
thing)
Grow the business (Enterprise)
 Revenue growth of 15%YOY
 Retain margins at 25% net
 Emp Sat of 80% + for the year
Support business growth (LOB – Customer Success)
 Deliver revenue (via referrals from existing clients) of $1M
 Sub KR: Build a referral system R where clients can refer others and
earn rewards
 Sub KR: Email campaign to notify existing clients once the system R
is complete

15. We can easily
see how the
Sub-KRs are
execution
boards
You will notice this has little to do directly with banking the $1M

16. This is (if you
think about it)
Agility moving
to the business
 Waterfall used to be conformance to specifications
 Agility brought in prioritization based on business value
 OKRs is bringing Agility to the business

17. The core
tenets still
apply
 Inspect and Adapt
 Shorter planning horizon
 Create optionality
We do these really well in Kanban systems!
Call out to complex systems v/s complicated systems (WIP – I’m not
sure how much time to spend on this one)
Our world-view tends be deterministic, and we often believe
problems are complicated, because it gives us a false sense of
control

18. Section 2 Modeling OKRs in Kanban

19. Given what I
said about
deterministic
thinking …
 OKRs are often modeled as a hierarchy of Kanban boards

20. Now, I’m not a
fan of this
modeling
Because of two problems:
1. We assume that the universe of work needed to deliver the
objective is on Boards
2. Optionality is a key part of success in complex systems (we do
not know (cannot know?) a-priori which option will work)

21. To make it
work
(hey, this is a
Kanban
conference, what
did you expect?)
1. We assume that the universe of work needed to deliver the
objective is on Boards
 We need to expect to discover work
 This work has to be placed and tracked in our Kanban system* (no
longer one board)
2. Optionality is a key part of success in complex systems (we do
not know (cannot know?) a-priori which option will work)
 Plan to create options and run spikes (both IT and Marketing) to
confirm
 The OKR pre-mortem is a great way to achieve this

22. Lets look at
ourOKR again
Support business growth (LOB – Customer Success)
 Deliver revenue (via referrals from existing clients) of $1M
 Sub KR: Build a referral system R where clients can refer others and
earn rewards
 Sub KR: Email campaign to notify existing clients once the system
R is complete
 Outcome: Both sub-KRs are complete, and the number of
referrals is Zero.

23. Lets look at
ourOKR again
Support business growth (LOB – Customer Success)
 Deliver revenue (via referrals from existing clients) of $1M
 Sub KR: Build a referral system R where clients can refer others and
earn rewards (IT)
 Sub KR: Email campaign to notify existing clients once the system R
is complete (Marketing)
 Outcome: Both sub-KRs are complete, and the number of
referrals is Zero. * Not happy …

24. Lets look at
ourOKR again
Support business growth (LOB – Customer Success)
 Deliver revenue (via referrals from existing clients) of $1M
 Sub KR: Build a referral system R where clients can refer others and
earn rewards (IT – unheard of Flow efficiency)
 Sub KR: Email campaign to notify existing clients once the system R
is complete (Marketing – best copy we have ever produced)
 (Account managers to meet clients)
 (system trigger offering enhanced rewards – refer now and earn
twice the value of rewards!)
 Now both these are examples of unplanned work
 Brainstorming under pressure – not the greatest option
* Not happy …

25. Pre-mortems
 For each KR, a pre-mortem is conducted
 What are all the reasons this KR can fail? – P, Q, R
 What do we do in case P, Q, R happen?

26. Modeling the
outcomes of
Pre-mortems
 Additional Backlog items which only go through a short validation
value stream, and stay in the Options backlog – these are not
picked up in normal work, but only when the KR does not move
with the sub-KR completion

27. Questions?