INSPIRED, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 29Product Team Objectives

The OKR technique has enjoyed considerable success, especially inside technology product organizations, from large to small. And there have been some very important lessons learned as teams and organizations work to improve their ability to execute.

OKRs are a very general tool that can be used by anyone in the organization, in any role, or even for your use in your personal life. However, as with any tool, some ways of applying them are better than others.

Throughout this book, I emphasize the importance of a product team. Recall that a product team is a cross‐functional set of professionals, typically comprised of a product manager, a product designer, and a small number of engineers. In addition, there are sometimes additional people with specialized skills included on the team, such as a data analyst, a user researcher, or a test automation engineer.

Also recall that each product team typically is responsible for some significant part of the company's product offering or technology. For example, one product team might be responsible for mobile apps for drivers, another for mobile apps for riders, another might be responsible for secure payment handling, and so on.

The key is that these people with their different skill sets usually come from different functional departments in the company, but they sit and work all day—every day—with their cross‐functional team to solve hard business and technology problems.

It's not unusual in larger organizations ...