Goals, Metrics, KPIs, and OKRs: Distinctions and Examples, According to Siddharth Arora
Product leader Siddharth Arora explains characteristics of Goals, Metrics, KPIs, and OKRs. Examples included.
By Tremis Skeete, for Product Coalition
How does a product manager work towards learning where to find opportunities to increase product success?
A product manager’s success is arguably due to their keen focus on measuring the performance of their product(s). They focus on learning about how successful the services, features and capabilities are — in order to discover opportunities to make product decisions that take that performance to higher levels.
In making these decisions, product managers want to know which among these entities that exist are best to use to track and measure performance.
In this article, you will read about four:
Goals, Metrics, KPIs, and OKRs.
As a pathway to distinguish between the four before mentioned — Group product manager at Yelp, Siddharth Arora explains via his LinkedIn post.
Read a copy of Siddharth’s LinkedIn post below to find out more:
Do you know the difference between Goals, Metrics, KPIs, and OKRs?
Give me four minutes, and I will make you understand.
Goals
• Are always forward looking
• Help define where you want to be in a certain time frame.
• Are an objective way to represent your aspirations
• The perfect goals are easily measurable and have a time-frame attached
Example:
For a food delivery app, Improve Avg. orders per week per user 15% in 6 months
Metrics
• are always numbers
• are usually a calculation. Every calculation has a clear definition
• good metrics are simple to understand and easy to measure
• are used to measure things of interest
Example:
• Avg. order value = total order value in a week / total no. of orders in a week
• Total # users ordering in a week = no. of unique users who ordered at least once in a week
• Avg. orders per user per week = total no. of orders per week / total users who ordered in a week
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
• by definition they are “key” and important for decision making.
• the most important metrics become KPIs
• KPIs are used to measure progress of goals
Example: Avg. orders per user per week
OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
• is a structured method to set objectives and measure progress
• every goal can have multiple objectives
• every objective can have multiple key results
• good rule of thumb: have less than 3 objectives per quarter
Example:
Objective 1: Increase breakfast orders by 25% in 3 months
• KR1: launch “Breakfast” tile on Home page
• KR2: increase cart page CTR for “breakfast” orders by 5%
