Applying OKR to Project Management: A Practical Guide

By Steven on Efficiency Improvement

Project management is the systematic planning, organization, direction, coordination, control, and evaluation of all work involved in a project, from investment decision to project completion, within limited resources, to achieve project goals.

At Youzan, projects go through a series of planning processes and, once resources are confirmed, the project is launched. This article discusses how to manage the R&D process using OKR.

1. Introduction to OKR

OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is a goal‑setting framework originally created by Intel and popularized by Google after John Doerr introduced it. An objective must be clear, measurable, and follow the SMART principle (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time‑bounded). For example, instead of saying “grow the website,” say “increase website revenue by 10% YoY” or “raise APRU by 15% per month.”

OKR Process

Define the objective clearly.

Quantify the key results and specify criteria for success and failure.

Collaborate to achieve the objective.

Evaluate progress based on project milestones.

2. Project Management and OKR

After a brief introduction to OKR, we return to project management. Most projects involve three key elements:

Milestones and delivery dates

Workload / task volume

Resources

Below is the typical R&D workflow used in our company:

2.1 Decomposing Goals with OKR in the Project Process

Applying OKR to project management involves setting long‑term objectives and key results. This is straightforward because a project already has a defined scope. Agile methods such as Scrum[3] and Kanban[4] can be used to support the process.

Objective (O) – e.g., launch the project or achieve a specific business metric.

Key Result (KR) – milestones that represent the completion of critical project outcomes.

Action (AC) – resources, team collaboration strategies, and implementation methods.

Even after long‑term goals are set, each stage of the project contains many unknowns. Using Scrum meetings (Planning, Daily, etc.) we can embed OKR discussions to extract more granular short‑term objectives, key results, and actions, producing mid‑term and short‑term goals.

Breaking down objectives from top to bottom clarifies each milestone and improves cross‑team collaboration, reducing resource waste caused by misaligned intermediate goals.

In practice, we often set the following cadence for goal definition and verification:

First day of each month: define monthly goals, devise action plans for issues, and verify key results at month‑end.

First day of each week: define weekly goals, devise action plans, and verify key results at week‑end.

Every morning at 10 am: define daily goals, devise action plans, and verify key results at 6 pm.

These brief (usually 20‑minute) meetings are highly valuable because they ensure:

Clear, verifiable goals.

Rapid response to problems through actionable strategies.

Focused cross‑team collaboration.

Top‑down goal decomposition that allows lower‑level goals (daily/half‑day) to adjust higher‑level goals (weekly/monthly), reducing deviation caused by market changes.

2.2 Personnel Requirements

OKR theory requires each individual to identify their own objective, which must be reviewed for reasonableness and alignment across functions. Typical project roles that oversee objectives include:

Business Owner

Product Owner

Technical Lead

Test Lead

Operations Lead

These leaders help ensure that all team members share a common goal, leading to:

Better alignment and pacing of project and business objectives, enabling finer‑grained decision‑making (e.g., early feature releases).

Stronger global perspective among leaders, fostering future team leads.

Reduced communication gaps and earlier risk detection, allowing proactive research and correction.

2.3 Goal Verification Methods

When an Objective (O) is set, corresponding Key Results (KR) and Actions (AC) are defined. KR provides clear verification criteria. Examples:

Daily Goal: Complete Customer Management module. KR1 – Module runs end‑to‑end. KR2 – Unit test coverage ≥ 70%.

Weekly Goal: Deliver CRM system. KR1 – All modules integrated without critical workflow blocks. KR2 – Integration test coverage ≥ 70%.

During verification, teams demonstrate and test whether the KRs are met. Unmet KRs trigger new ACs to accelerate progress, or become the next set of actions or key results. This continuous loop keeps project goals clear, controllable, and visible to all stakeholders, enabling timely improvements and reducing deviation from expectations.

3. Conclusion

Although this article only briefly introduces the integration of OKR with project management, many agile practices (Scrum, Kanban, XP) and traditional techniques (WBS, milestones) are implicitly involved. Depending on project type and complexity, teams can selectively adopt or omit methods to balance plan‑driven and value‑driven approaches, achieving both a good process and a good outcome.

Different organizations can experiment with richer practices, but the ultimate aim remains: achieve objectives, minimize resource waste, and maintain control. Goal‑setting can also be combined with techniques like “Eat That Frog” to improve effectiveness.

Below is a comparison table of common management methods:

[1] Project Management – https://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/项目管理

[2] OKR – https://wiki.mbalib.com/zh-cn/OKR

[3] Scrum – https://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/Scrum

[4] Kanban – https://wiki.mbalib.com/wiki/Kanban

[5] Eat That Frog – https://book.douban.com/subject/3371165/