Product Division OKRs

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On this page

• Product Division OKR Overview
  • General timeline and process
  • Guidance on timeline and process
• Timeline and process for every quarter
  • OKR Kick-off by Chief Product Officer
  • Current quarter OKR references
    • Past Quarters
• Updating the Status and Progress of OKRs
• How to write OKRs
• Additional Resources
• Timeline and process for previous quarters
• How to contribute to this page

Principles - Processes - Categorization - GitLab the Product - PM Responsibilities - Being a PM - Performance Indicators - Leadership

Product Division OKR Overview

For an overview of our overall approach to OKRs, as well as any company-wide OKR due dates, visit Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

General timeline and process

Guidance on timeline and process

This page provides an overview of the Product Division OKR workflow. All departments (product management, UX, etc.) collaborate by following this guidance. For clarifications on the OKR process, team members can post in Slack #product and tag Product Operations. Team members can also attend Product Operations office hours for live support. Every quarter, there will also be a feedback issue linked on this page as part of the current quarter references that anyone can contribute to.

Timeline and process for every quarter

OKR Kick-off by Chief Product Officer

• 8 weeks prior to the start of the quarter, an automated drafting issue kicks off the OKR drafting process:
  • Product Operations updates the issue with known Objectives, due dates and any other details needed
  • Product Operations signals the Chief Product Officer and the Product team the drafting issue is available for contributions/ideation
• 6 weeks prior to the start of the quarter:
  • CEO and Chief of Staff to the CEO initiate the OKR process. See CEO initiates new quarter's OKRs
  • CProdO shares proposed Product Division OKRs aligned to the annual product investment themes and annual CEO Objectives leveraging the drafting issue and pings the Product Leadership Team for review and feedback
  • Product Leadership team provides their feedback or any alternate OKRs in the drafting issue
  • VP, UX provides OKR proposals from the UX perspective, in the drafting issue
  • Product Operations tags Product Management, CoS to CTO/Engineering and any other cross-funcitional leaders necessary to review/consider for shared OKRs
• 5 weeks prior to the start of the quarter:
  • Initial draft of CEO OKRs is shared with E-Group in the E-Group Weekly.
  • CProdO aligns Product Division OKRs with CEO OKRs if needed and gets CEO approval as needed
  • CProdO discusses any joint Product-Engineering OKRs with CTO as needed
• 4 weeks prior to the start to quarter:
  • CProdO updates and finalizes Product Division OKRs in the drafting issue
  • Product Operations creates high level OKRs in GitLab and tags in Product Managers to finalize KR drafts with their Product Grooup/Quad
  • Product Operations tags CoS to CTO/Engineering to finalize committments to shared OKRs
• 3 weeks prior to start of fiscal quarter, Product Operations asks Product Leadership to review all their Product Managers' OKRs and finalize their teams' OKR committments
• 1 week prior to quarter start, Product Operations reviews and ensures all OKRs have been drafted and added in GitLab
• 1 week after quarter start:
  • Product Operations reminds all Product update previous quarter scores and close their OKR issues
  • Product Operations asks Directors, and Group Product Managers to run OKR retrospectives for their teams for the previous quarter.

Current quarter OKR references

This section will be updated by Product Operations quarterly.

• FY23 Q4 Product Division OKRs
• FY23 Q4 OKR overview video
• FY23 Q4 feedback issue
• FY24 Q1 company-wide OKR timeline

Past Quarters

Product Division (PM and UX) OKRs for the following quarters can be found in this sheet as Ally.io usage is has been sunsetted:

• FY23 Q3
• FY23 Q2
• FY23 Q1
• FY22 Q4

• FY22 Q3

• Product OKRs FY22 Q2
• Product OKRs FY22 Q1
• Product OKRs FY21 Q4
• Product OKRs FY21 Q3

Updating the Status and Progress of OKRs

When to update the status of Product OKRs

• For all Product team OKRs, the KR owners are responsible for keeping the status of their KRs in GitLab up to date
  • Team members who own specific OKRs will update the score (% complete) in GitLab monthly and ping any relevant stakeholders as needed. For example, since FY23-Q1 begins February 1, KR owners will provide score updates by February 15, March 15 and April 15. We follow this mid-month cycle to ensure there are accurate OKR status updates for Key Reviews which typically happen around the 20th of each month.
• Owners of KRs will get pinged with reminders to do "check-ins" via Slack around the 5th of each month.
• Owners of KRs will also get pinged in the Product Key Review issue as needed to update the Product Key Review slides around the 18th of each month based on what is in GitLab.

How to report progress of Product OKRs

• Prior to the start of each quarter, shared product KR owners should lead and align on a plan for the Product Group to accomplish their KRs.
• For guidance on how to structure and score OKRs, refer to the Scoring OKRs section on the GitLab OKRs page (https://about.gitlab.com/company/okrs/#scoring-okrs).

How this will look in Product Key Review slides

• Product Key Reviews will reference Ally.io in an OKR specific slide
• Product team OKR owners may leverage this slide template if additional details are needed for their KRs

How to write OKRs

It is highly recommended that product groups limit the number of OKRs they commit to so they have reasonable bandwidth to deliver on them. PMs should consider either setting 1 OKR that's not related to a product theme OR 3 or fewer KRs if they are using the product themes as their objectives.

Here's are some examples of how GPMs and PMs can use epics/issues to plan and outline their product group OKRs:

• Create stage

  • Create: Editor group

  • Create: Code review group

• Manage stage

  • Compliance group

Verify stage

For more resources on OKRs, such as more about what OKRs are, the importance of OKRs at GitLab, and how to write OKRs and examples, see the company OKR handbook page. You can also find more resources in Product Management Learning & Development.

Additional Resources

• What Matters

Timeline and process for previous quarters

For previous quarters, please see previous quarter OKR timelines

How to contribute to this page

We encourage suggestions and improvements to the Product OKR process so please feel free to raise an MR to this page. To keep us all aligned, as the process touches all teams across the company, please assign all MRs for collaboration, review and approval to Product Operations.