Background

How do we know we are working on the right thing? This is a question any contributor to FINOS can ask, and which should be easy for any of us to answer.

As adoption expands and our work continues to grow in breadth and in depth, so does our responsibility to provide the right focus and to empower our contributors.

There are many ways to create goals within an organization. This proposal will present OKRs as a goal setting methodology for the Use Case Working Group.

Introduction to OKRs

OKRs help us measure what matters

OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results.
The OKR methodology originated at Intel under Andy Grove, gained popularity at Google when John Doerr introduced them to Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1999, then took off over the following 2 decades and was successfully used at companies like the Gates Foundation, Twitter, Oracle, and Zygna.
The main goal of OKRs is to connect company, team and personal objectives to measurable results, making people move together in right direction¹.
OKRs should be measurable goals that are aligned across an organization to create a golden thread of objectives.
Key benefits of OKRs include increased clarity, focus, and collaboration².

Example of good OKRs

Source: Weekdone blog

Example of Cascading OKRs (Golden Thread)

Source: Measure what Matters by John Doerr (Amazon)

What OKRs Might Look like for the UCWG

Our Working Group Process with OKRs

Created and ratified by the UCWG
OKRs can be written for the year and/or the next quarter
Progress on OKRs should be reviewed monthly
Any member of the UCWG can propose we amend our OKRs
The UCWG's OKRs should remain aligned to the FDC3's OKRs
OKRs are used to set priorities for the UCWG

Discussion

2019 Objectives and Key Results for the UCWG

Objective: Advance business transformation by connecting the financial desktop app ecosystem and streamlined user workflows

KR #1: Document at least 10 key cross-app financial workflows
KR #2: Promote use-cases with other FDC3 working groups and reach 80% standards covered by use cases
KR #3: Demonstrate business transformation, as measured by qualitative metrics (5 testimonials from adopters) and quantitative metrics (50,000 competed interop workflows)

How our OKRs might fit into FDC3 and FINOS

Source: 2019 OKRS - A proposal for FDC3’s Use Case Working Group (May 21 2019).pptx

Additional Educational Resources

Measure What Matters by John Doerr (book, website)
Introduction to OKR by weekdone - https://blog.weekdone.com/introduction-okr-objectives-key-results/
How Buffer uses OKRs - https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.trello.com/okrs-set-achieve-track-trello%3fhs_amp=true
Defining goals, actors, impact, deliverables: https://www.impactmapping.org/drawing.html