Identifying the OKR's for BallotNav

[kcoronel]

Dependency

Add OKR Guide to this issue

Overview

We need to collaborate on identifying how best we will measure the successes using milestones and measurable results.

Action Items

• Identify North Star metric for BallotNav
• PM drafts OKR's (up to 3) that support the North Star metric
• PM shares with PM team
• PM will share with larger team for pre-work before our Tuesday general meetings (team independently reviews doc.)
• Meeting with Team
• Review OKRs

Resources

Ballot NAV OKRs
Useful OKR reading - https://www.whatmatters.com/articles/okrs-positive-social-change-nonprofit/
Useful OKR reading - https://www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=1456
100 Automation Example OKRs

[staceyrebekahscott]

OKRs for 2022: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n14wrlsUbGUVoCzt2UT2B2c8-ekbWsT9LdCDFq72zjI/edit

During PM meeting with Bonnie on 02/19/22, she mentioned that teams that developed OKRs were generally unsuccessful and she seemed not too keen on continuing the practice (or that is how I interpreted her comments). My view, after reviewing OKRs from 100Automations, and the early iterations of BallotNav's OKRs is that they were poorly written. Bonnie shared a list of Objectives/KPIs from another project, really just a slightly different approach to the goal setting process.

Whether we call them Key Results or Key Performance Indicators, I still think we should have our objectives set and ways to measure them planned out, with flexibility as they will likely change as the project moves forward.

The current iteration, see link above, is a rough draft of one Objective and some Key Results and some questions to consider as we develop more. I am going to continue working on this with another draft ready to show by our meeting next week, and then I think we should have something "finalized" by the following week, with "finalized" in quotes to mean the current iteration of our Objectives at this time.

Next Draft for team to review: by 03/01/22
"Finalized"/ Current Iteration of Objectives: by 03/08/22

If anyone has any feedback on the OKR process or any other method of team goal setting, or ideas on what ours should be, please add to comments on this issue.

[layneam]

Sorry for a slow response here Stacey. My intuition, FWIW, is that it is very hard to write goals when we haven't talked to customers about their problems. Following a goal written against unvalidated assumptions may mean that we have to scrap or rework the product down the road. Maybe I missed a conversation or misunderstood, so I'm happy to be wrong here, but should we pause and consider a "ready, aim, fire" approach? We could have lots for the team to do with customer research and prototyping/co-designing at this stage I'm sure.

More food for thought, article from Reforge: https://www.reforge.com/blog/set-better-goals-with-ncts-not-okrs

[kcoronel]

I'm in between both of your suggestions Stacey and Layne. I think it is worth being able to quantive what we aim to do even in one key objective. I agree with you Layne that the customer insight is important, and want us to be aware of when in the MVP process we introduce this, however I do think we need to still consider even the minimal objective for an open software package for governments.

[staceyrebekahscott]

Moving to prioritized backlog, as issue #462 is more of a priority at this time.

[staceyrebekahscott]

• Due to updated thinking on this issue, moved to Market Fit Research project.
• Updated thinking was influenced by a podcast episode of "Product Thinking with Melissa Perri", link to transcript: Shifting how we measure success with Jeff Gothelf
• Podcast illustrates a different way of thinking about OKRs: making key results about behavior, thus using OKRs as a framework for mapping out a customer journey
• Identified SMART goals for Market Fit project, and would like to use this framework for thinking about the customer journey we imagine for BallotNav.

[staceyrebekahscott]

• Read article Layne recommended: Set Better Goals with NCTs
• My conclusion from this is that the authors may be misunderstanding what OKRs are and how they work as a goal setting framework.
• OKRs are somewhat difficult to understand and create not because it is an incomplete framework, but because they are extremely high level and do not include the specifics of how to achieve them. This planning part is missing from the explanations of OKRs and is a failure of those explaining it, not the framework itself.
• NCTs don't fix the problems of goal setting, nor do they necessarily make goal setting easier, as the framework can also fail if the basics that the article details are missing, Ex: not explaining strategy to teams, creating cross-functional goals in silos. These details can also be missed when setting NCTs.
• I have not been convinced by this article that NCTs are a better framework than OKRs, but I found the article challenged my thinking and made me want to understand OKRs and goal setting better. Thanks Layne!

[staceyrebekahscott]

Rather than thinking about setting goals based on making BallotNav work in its current form, ex: evaluating user feedback, deciding on how to build software for gov't use, the goals at this phase should go back earlier to determine the feasibility of how we can build and maintain a website long term as a volunteer organization.

Having an understanding of this is critical to:

• developing a partnership- we will need to convince a partner that we can be reliable over the long term, and have a plan for ongoing maintenance and support of their organization.
• developing a needed service- is a ballot drop off box locator seen as a critical missing piece of voter mobilization? is the goal of developing this website to provide needed voter information to voters, and how does the website do this? is a nationwide ballot drop off box locator needed to solve the issue of voter disenfranchisement among vulnerable populations?
• developing a product that is useful and can be easily implemented- do we as HfLA have the expertise to really solve this issue, even if it is identified as a needed service by voters and partners? are we really the ones that can solve this with a viable solution? have we identified already the difficulty of collecting this data just by the research we have already done? is it possible the reason this product doesn't already exist because of this difficulty in data collection?

[staceyrebekahscott]

Google Doc of transcript for podcast episode: Shifting how we measure success