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OKR template

Engineering OKR examples

This is a free engineering OKR template with 2 objectives, 6 key results, and 7 starter initiatives you can copy. Delivery and reliability as outcomes, not story points: how fast a change reaches customers, and how rarely it hurts them. It is written for Seed, Series A and Growth companies.

  • 2 objectives
  • 6 key results
  • Seed
  • Series A
  • Growth

What does a engineering OKR look like?

Copy these as they are and edit the numbers to your own baselines. The objective is the outcome you want to be true by the end of the quarter; the key results are how you will know it happened; the initiatives are the bets you are making to get there.

Objective 1 Operational

Make releasing boring

Shipping should be an ordinary event, not a decision. This quarter takes the fear out of deploying so the team can hold a weekly rhythm for the rest of this year — measured on cycle time and change failure rate, not on output.

KR 1.1 Headline

Median pull-request cycle time 4.5 days → 1.5 days

How it is measured: Hours from first commit to merged, median across merged PRs

Baseline: 4.5 days · Target: 1.5 days

Initiatives

  • Split the review queue by area and give each area a named first reviewer
  • Cap open PRs per engineer at two and enforce it in standup
KR 1.2

Change failure rate 18% → 6% of the changes we put in production

How it is measured: Production changes needing a fix or rollback, over all production changes

Baseline: 18% · Target: 6%

Initiatives

  • Add a one-click rollback and rehearse it in a game day
KR 1.3

Time to restore service after a Sev-1, 6 hours → 45 minutes

How it is measured: Median minutes from Sev-1 declared to service healthy

Baseline: 6 hours · Target: 45 minutes

Initiatives

  • Write a one-page runbook for the three systems that page us most
Objective 2 Operational

Keep the product fast enough that nobody thinks about it

Latency and uptime are a feature customers only notice when they're missing. This is the quarter's slice of an annual reliability bar we intend to hold.

KR 2.1 Headline

p95 dashboard load time 3.2s → 1.2s

How it is measured: p95 time to interactive on the dashboard route

Baseline: 3.2s · Target: 1.2s

Initiatives

  • Profile the dashboard query path and cut the two slowest calls
KR 2.2

Uptime 99.4% → 99.9% on the customer-facing API

How it is measured: Successful minutes over total minutes, from the external health check

Baseline: 99.4% · Target: 99.9%

Initiatives

  • Alert on the four symptoms customers actually feel and delete the rest
KR 2.3

Sev-1 incidents per quarter 5 → 1

How it is measured: Count of customer-visible Sev-1 incidents in the quarter

Baseline: 5 · Target: 1

Initiatives

  • Run a blameless review within 48 hours of every incident and land one fix from each

Why are these key results written this way?

Every example above passes the same quality rubric Hespia grades real OKRs against. Four rules do most of the work, and they are worth keeping when you edit the numbers:

  1. The objective has no number in it

    An objective is a qualitative state of the world you want to be true. The number belongs one level down, on the key result. An objective with a metric in the title is really a key result that lost its parent.

  2. Every key result shows a baseline, not just a target

    "Median pull-request cycle time 4.5 days → 1.5 days" is readable at a glance because the movement is visible. A target with no starting number cannot be paced weekly, so nobody can tell in week 4 whether it is slipping.

  3. Every ratio names a denominator the team cannot shrink

    "Of the accounts that started the quarter" is a fixed denominator. "Of active accounts" is not — the definition of active can move, and the percentage improves without anything real changing.

  4. Enabling work sits in initiatives, not in key results

    "Launch the new onboarding" is work; "activation in week one from 31% to 45%" is the result the work is meant to produce. Shipping the project is not the same as the outcome arriving, so the two live at different levels.

A template remembers. It doesn't chase.

Copied into a doc, these 6 key results depend on someone reopening the doc every week. Hespia seeds this exact board in one click, then reads pace on every key result weekly, flags what is slipping in week 4 instead of week 13, and writes the digest nobody wants to write. $100/month flat, whole team included.

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Engineering OKR questions

What are good engineering OKRs?

Good engineering OKRs pair a qualitative objective with key results that each carry a number. In this template the objectives are "Make releasing boring" and "Keep the product fast enough that nobody thinks about it", and every key result underneath states the metric, where it starts, and where it needs to land — for example "Median pull-request cycle time 4.5 days → 1.5 days". If a key result has no starting number, it is a task rather than a key result.

How many key results should a engineering team have?

Three to five key results per objective, and no more than two or three objectives per team in a quarter. This template uses 2 objectives and 6 key results in total, which is a realistic quarter for one team. More than that and the weekly check-in stops fitting in fifteen minutes, which is how the ritual dies.

Are these engineering OKR examples free to use?

Yes. Every objective, key result, and initiative on this page is free to copy into any doc, spreadsheet, or goal tool, with no signup and no email. Hespia, the AI mentor that tracks weekly pace on each of these key results and chases the owners, is $100/month flat for the whole team.

Why does every key result here name its denominator?

Because a ratio without a stated denominator can be improved by shrinking the bottom number instead of growing the top one. A team that reports "percentage of active accounts" can quietly redefine "active" and post a win it did not earn. Every percentage in this template names a denominator the team cannot move, such as the accounts that started the quarter.

More OKR templates

Engineering quality and tech debt OKR examples

Bugs found before customers find them, and the accumulated debt that taxes every change — paid down where it slows you most.

Company and founder OKR examples

The two goals a founder-led company runs on: win the segment you chose, and make the business predictable enough to plan a year around.

Product OKR examples

Activation and habit — whether new users reach value, and whether teams come back without being chased.

Product monetization OKR examples

The product doing its own selling: trials that convert without a call, and usage that opens the upgrade conversation for you.

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