OKR Software Guide

GUIDING QUESTIONS, DECISION GRID TO PICK YOUR OKR TOOLS

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Free alternatives for smaller teams ( < 50): Google Sheets, Office 365 or Airtable

It is absolutely o.k. to start with these free options. Once you are a smaller organisation with less than 50 employees or a team, you can easily handle your OKRs with xls/ Google Sheets. Or you use it as an interim solution to get a feeling in order to make a better decision what you think is important from a software tool perspective. Even if you have made the decision to go with a tool, it's usually easier for your employees to draft their first sets within excel and then transfer the final OKR sets into the software - just to minimise complexity in the starting phase. Go get our free, simple and proven...

How-to-OKR template for xls/ Office 356/ Google Sheets.

Worth a look is Airtable with its SaaS approach on spreadsheets and databases. Free with essential features, super flexible and great to work across teams. They also provide a solid OKR base template to start with, however this will require some learning effort for teams to use it. 

GI OKR is a free product from General Internet offering basic OKR features with no cost. 

Perdoo just announced to offer a free version, as most of their new clients are also new to OKRs and therefore not ready to pay for software. 

Not entirely free, but for a similar reason as Perdoo, Gtmhub offers a 1$/ user licence for an easy start with their tool. 

The "project/ task or CRM" related tools: e.g. Asana, Trello, Salesforce

These tools are originally made for task-, workflow-, collaboration- or project management. As one part of the mindset change with OKRs is to go from tasks to results. Using a „task-based“ software might not be supportive to this mindset change and you should plan for an extra-detailed training and quality checks around OKRs. The advantage on the other hand, is that you don't need to add and train just another software platform, if you run one of these tools already.

Trello: 

Trello is one of the examples where the OKR part requires quite some manual setup following your OKR cadence. This might be still o.k. for the start, but won't add any value on the long term. In case you want to go for Trello to track your OKRs, you should be using the following logic. (btw. Trello is now part of Atlassian)

• One board equals one business unit or „OKR owner“
• One list equals one objective
• One card equals one Key Result
• Use labels to indicate confidence level and/ or to track progress of a Key Result
• Never copy a board, list or card
• Ignore watch
• Never archive
• You can link cards about tasks with OKR cards to assign contributions to Key Results
• Provide an OKR template with a „read me“ documentation

Asana:

Asana's brand new functionality is called "Goals" and is built-in seamlessly within the application. It now allows you to plan OKRs based on a certain cadence, apply owners for Objectives and Key Results and link Asana projects or tasks for OKR contributions. The setup is pretty flexible, so that you are also able to use confidence levels within your OKR setup. It pretty much delivers everything you would expect from a modern OKR tool and will - most likely - be most interesting for existing Asana Users. Again, make sure that people understand the difference between projects, tasks and OKRs. If this is a given, this is indeed a great seamless solution for goals aka OKRs and the execution through to-do's and projects.

Atlassian/ Confluence/ Jira: 

This pretty widespread collaboration & agile software development suite is definitely suitable to manage OKRs (also if you just use the Confluence part). Every team is actually using a separate confluence page to manage and track their OKRs. You can also use our free OKR template and rebuild it as Confluence page template for teams. Experts use the "Exerpt-Include Macro" to link e.g. Team-OKRs to Department- or Company OKRs. In case you also use Jira, you can link Key Results with Jira-Tasks. So, in case you have Confluence in place already, it is indeed a good choice to go for it first and give it a try to handle OKRs through a template and a page structure per team. There is also an unsupported Team Playbook available which might be a good start to create your perfect template within Confluence. Another option is Upraise which works on top of Jira as a separate OKR tool.   

Salesforce CRM:

Now you might be surprised why we list Salesforce here. Well if you run a business where the majority of data, intelligence and automation is managed through Salesforce, then you'd like to keep everything under one roof. Axy OKR is a native Salesforce App which allows you to manage OKRs within Salesforce. While many other tools offer API connections, Axy is a native App solution with automated updates on progress and deadlines related to Salesforce metrics. OKRify is another native App solution for Salesforce with a nice, user-friendly hub to create and manage OKRs. It also covers OKR owners, automatic progress updates, confidence levels and a heat map for managers to know where to dive in and coach. 

The "OKR specialists": e.g. Ally, Zokri,  Perdoo, gtmhub, workboard, workpath, weekdone, workteam, Profit or Just3things, Mooncamp, tability.io, 

Here the focus is on managing goals with OKRs in an organisation. Main differences between these tools are UI, usability, the ability to link tasks to OKRs and the ability to integrate other software you´re using in your work environment (e.g. Slack, Jira, Analytics, Salesforce ect...).

Gtmhub is focussing a lot on these integrations with other software you're using in your organisation, allowing to automatically update Key Result progress which is great for your weekly check-ins. They call it „data driven OKRs“. Furthermore the tool provides great flexibility to align almost anything. O's to KR's, KR's to multiple O's...cool, but this requires also quite some discipline. Check out their 1$/ user licences for an easy start with their tool.

Perdoo also offers lots of integrations. They bring in a clear focus on handling OKRs, KPIs and individual initiatives seamlessly within one platform all contributing to your company's northstar or ultimate goal. A solid, proven and robust tool. Check out their free version to run a real quarter or pilot with their software.

Weekdone has made quite some changes recently resulting in a nice integration of OKRs with individual contributions, weekly check-ins, progress reports and recognition. 

Ally recently got acquired by Microsoft and is a rocksolid OKR tool with all main functionalities. Will be interesting to learn how this will be more integrated into the MS Suite. Both Slack and MS Teams integration is on board already now.

Workteam is actually a spin-off from a former in-house development project . They do have a nice approach to follow up OKRs in weekly check-ins for 1-to-1s or team meetings.

Zokri just recently released a great update and now allows you to cascade from your Mission, Vision, and Purpose through to your KPIs, and then your OKRs. The new check-in and team meeting workflows that focus on surfacing what's holding people back and finding a resolution look great. These workflows also include Initiatives that can be projects and tasks in tools like Asana, Trello and Jira. Because culture, wellbeing and personal development are key to OKR performance, ZOKRI also offers the ability to define and align your culture, monitor wellbeing, and create and manage Personal Development Plans that can result in Personal OKRs being set.

Mooncamp, a german-based startup, with a solid debut. Offering MS teams integration, huge flexibility to add properties, initiative layers, customise questions for OKR check-ins, management dashboards and many more. That way the tool easily adapts to the way, you perform OKRs in your organisation. It's all self-serviced and self-explaining, so you will do all the customisations yourself. German clients will appreciate the fact that they are GDPR compliant and host all data in Germany. 

tability.io, from Australia is going an interesting way to cover the whole process from OKR definition, integrating OKRs into meetings and conversations and getting stuff done through tasks, contributing to OKRs. The built-in (Miro-style) whiteboard facilitates to define OKRs as a team. The way the tool supports meaningful and continuous conversations through check-ins is great and the way they connect tasks to OKRs makes a lot sense. 

Workteam offers all the basics in a very easy way, so it' pretty straight forward. This tool also is a spin-off from a former in-house development.

Profit does not have a start-up background - like many others - but comes out of a software company with many years of CRM experience. There is a SaaS version, an app and the possibility to run Profit within your own IT environment! Their approach is really solid and is able to take new users by the hand proposing all sorts of metrics for different departments. From an OKR methodology point of view really convincing giving you all the freedom on the one hand, but guiding you step-by-step through alignment, delegation, dependencies and transparency of goals on the other hand.

Just3Things' background is also a former in-house development. Their focus is around flexible organisational designs, meaning companies working a lot with cross-functional teams and Squads who want to make sure that the sum of all priorities is still contributing to top-level strategies. 

Features like usability and progress visualisation/ gamification aspects are very subjective ones, so best advice is to look into the different tools and ask for a demo. Features like aligning Key Results or connecting your longterm strategies across departments and quarterly OKRs and visualizing this easily, is something crucial from a methodology perspective, but in the end also a bit subjective. So go and check out the guiding questions at the end and apply for a demo with tool you'd like to put on your shortlist.

The "OKR & performance management" tools: e.g.  Lattice, Reflektive, Upraise, Atiim, Leapsome, Betterworks, 7Geese, 15five, Small Improvements, GroSum, Fitbots, Weekly10, FlowyTeam, Clear Review, Hirebook

Having conducted many OKR implementations, we see the need for organisations to combine a full blown OKR software tool with the ability to do continuous feedback loops and take these as one component for performance reviews or handling performance reviews with the same platform. This absolutely makes sense although OKRs are not supposed to be a performance management tool. There should never be a direct connection between OKRs, its achievement and compensation or bonus. However it's an excellent source to do continious feedback loops with your direct reports. It's great to listen to the pulse of your organisation. The blended results of these ongoing and regular feedback loops might then be an indicator for a later 360 degree performance evaluation. An interesting feature some players in this category are offering is the ability to do regular Pulse surveys or engagement surveys with employees which is great because many outcome based OKRs actually target effects at employee level and many organisations can't measure this easily. 

Knowing that the word „performance management“ can have various interpretations out there, these simple questions can help to identify whether this cluster might be relevant for you: 

• how do you handle performance management today and will OKRs be „disruptive“ to your current approach or will you still be able to handle it properly with OKRs?
• do you anyway plan to reorganise the way you do performance management, feedback and conversations or do you have no real and structured approach in place today? 

Guess we don´t have to explain the logic behind the possible answers ;-) Anyway, also here clear advice is to go and check out the free versions or apply for a demo. Good to stay flexible is a pricing model based on packages which most suppliers offer, e.g. you could start with the OKR part and then add 360 degree feedbacks. Btw most of these tools offer full Jira integration - actually Upraise is a Jira add-on, but offers only basic functionality and usability compared to the other tools in this segment. Worth mentioning in this segment for smaller and medium sized companies is Atiim, Leapsome or 7Geese. Based on the functionality you will recognise that some of these players originally come from the HR side of life ( e.g. Leapsome) and others started their concept from OKRs (e.g. Atiim). Interesting to look at is Small Improvements, GroSum and Reflektive (written with a "k") who are actually going more into the HR direction with People Management, Performance Reviews, 360 degree feedbacks, 1:1 Meetings/ Check-Ins and OKRs. Reflektive is even adding a functionality around simple and quick Pulse Surveys with employees which is great data for OKRs. 15five is now also in this position, as they recently acquired a company specialised on engagement surveys and is now also offering those alongside with 360 degree feedback loops. GroSum is offering an optional package around performance management and compensation budgeting and payouts. Hirebook even goes further, covering and supporting all the way from Strategy Development, OKR Management, Performance Management, Continuous conversations to handling tasks. 

Compared to other players out there, Betterworks (and possibly Reflektive, 7 Geese and 15five) are more of a solution for large companies  or enterprises (although Betterworks now also offers a self-service solution  for 5-250 employees called Team Edition). Or in other words: they do have a track record with large enterprises, whereas most of the others started and are growing within the 50-500 employee category. What we mean with large? Starting around 1000 employees – and we mean employees who will "own" an OKR set. Betterworks is working towards a modern business operating system which includes task management, goal setting/ OKRs, continuous 360 degree feedback, Pulse surveys, employee engagement surveys, a talent calibration tool and loads of software integrations. 

We do offer a special 2,5h course on designing ( or re-designing) your ideal performance management approach allowing OKRs to work at full force. Go here for more info.

• assess your current OKR process
• receive clear recommendations to improve quality, process and outcome