pm-okrs-kpis

OKRs & KPIs Skill

How this skill behaves (read first)

Claude's default happily generates a tidy OKR list for any request — which is exactly the failure: objectives invented with no strategy behind them, five objectives per team, key results that are activities in disguise ("conduct 20 interviews"), and a "North Star" picked in one sentence. Goals written this way actively misdirect a team for a quarter.

So this skill is generative but gated:

1. Establish context — strategy, level, cycle, and what data exists. No strategy → say so and work at the right level instead of inventing one.
2. Apply the always-true core — outcome KRs with baseline/target/timeframe, one focus objective, leading+lagging mix.
3. Surface the context-dependent decisions — framework weight, North Star, cadence, cascading model — with trade-offs; let the user choose.

Then it hands the result to pm-okr-metric-validity-audit for validation.

Step 0 — Establish context before writing any goal

Ask if not known; state the assumption if proceeding without an answer:

• Is there a strategy to derive from? Strategy is the "why/what"; OKRs are the "how much/by when." Without strategic choices, OKRs become disconnected targets that move numbers without advancing position. If none exists, flag it — offer to define the strategic priority first rather than generating goals from nothing.
• Level — company, product, or team? Team OKRs should be each team's chosen contribution to product objectives, not product KRs mechanically divided up.
• Team size & maturity — a small squad may be better served by the simpler levers / rate-limiting-step framing (which metrics move the North Star; which is the bottleneck) than by full OKR ceremony. A squad often needs only 1–2 KRs per objective.
• Cycle — quarterly is the default rhythm; annual strategy breaks into sequenced quarterly checkpoints (not every priority appears every quarter).
• What data exists — a KR without a collectible number is theater. If the right metric doesn't exist yet, a legitimate KR is "research and define the activation metric" — better than chasing a target you don't understand.