Why OKRs Fail Most Product Teams — And What We’re Doing Differently

Most OKRs = Only Kinda Relevant

OKRs are supposed to keep teams aligned. But more often than not, they just create another layer of confusion.

Leadership sets ambitious goals. Teams plan their work. And somewhere between the kickoff deck and the roadmap review, those goals get abstracted until they're too vague to influence anything meaningful.

“People tend to write OKRs in a way that’s vague — things like ‘build this, deliver that.’ But that’s not a true objective. For example, “Improve platform experience,’ can just become a bucket of work. Without clearly defined key results, two people can read the same objective and walk away with completely different interpretations of what success actually looks like.”

 — Daniele, Senior PM at Productboard

The problem isn’t that product teams don’t care about strategy. It’s that most systems treat strategy as a separate layer; something discussed in quarterly planning sessions and revisited in slide decks, not something teams actually use to make decisions week to week.

OKRs fail not because the framework is flawed, but because the way we implement them disconnects strategy from execution.

A Vision for Living, Breathing OKRs

At Productboard, we believe OKRs should act as guiding principles, not just placeholders or folders for loosely related work. They should inform tradeoffs, shape priorities, and inspire and empower teams to move fast—because they know their work ladders up to what matters.

“Sometimes OKRs feel more like folders than guiding principles. But they should really help you evaluate: are we doing the right things this quarter, or are we just moving forward with what we planned?

And, on a team front, they should be inspiring. OKRs can give meaning to much smaller features. For example, at Productboard, sorting columns on grid boards sounds like quite a "small" feature, but when we think about objectives related to moving people off old boards and onto our new experience, it becomes a much bigger feature in terms of impact.”

— Daniele

We’ve been building toward a model where OKRs live inside the work: visible in roadmaps, reflected in planning, and used as a filter to evaluate whether that next feature, fix, or initiative really drives impact.

This shift from goals as artifacts to goals as infrastructure has helped us turn OKRs from something we reference at the beginning of the quarter into something we consistently come back to.

What We’ve Learned Using Productboard Internally

Productboard’s own OKR system evolved through trial and error. In early planning cycles, it wasn’t uncommon to see objectives shift a few days after alignment meetings—or to discover initiatives in flight that no longer mapped to updated goals.

Now, we’ve refined our approach to make OKRs visible, actionable, and genuinely helpful to PMs across the org.

Here are three things that made the biggest difference:

• We surface OKRs inside the roadmap. When objectives are right there in the view, you don’t have to bounce between tabs or rely on memory.
• We connect initiatives and features to company-level goals. It’s easy to tell what ladders up—and what doesn’t.
• We give leadership and ICs the same view. That shared context helps leaders track progress without micromanaging, and helps PMs make decisions that reflect broader priorities.

As our leadership team develops the OKRs, they’re shared broadly with all teams. Everybody has access to the board. Not only does this foster trust and transparency, but it also means that our OKRs are physically living in the place where I’m doing prioritization. It’s hard to lose sight of OKRs when they’re right there. I can then really assess if what I had planned for my teams ladders up to these objectives still. This is the time for ruthless prioritization. As PMs, we wish we could build everything. But time and resources means we need to make sure we’re building the most important thing.

— Daniele

Making Product Strategy Feel Real

It’s one thing to write down an objective. It’s another thing to feel its impact on your daily work.

For Daniele, one of the biggest unlocks has been using OKRs as a lens to re-evaluate plans—not just to justify what’s already been scoped, but to reflect on whether the work is still the best use of the team’s time.

We were working on a set of features, which had a lot of interdependencies between them. Initially I made the decision to do a big bang release and wait until everything was done. But during quarterly planning one of the Key Results was to get a certain number of Productboard spaces using a set of features by a specific date. Our initially planned release was well after our Key Result date! Knowing that we had a company-wide goal we needed to hit meant we revisited our approach, the scope, and the release cohort to try to hit our Key Result. It gave us the focus we needed to guide decision making.

— Daniele

OKRs have also made communication outside the product org much easier. When cross-functional stakeholders ask why something didn’t get prioritized, teams can point back to the OKRs—and the 5–10 other initiatives connected to them—as a shared frame of reference.

We decided to ship a set of features as a Beta to a subset of Productboard plan types. Our Key Result pushed us to get it in the hands of users sooner. Without it, we would’ve been heads-down and not delivering value for longer. With our target and a date, we’re able to clearly communicate why these decisions were made to GTM teams.

Advice for Product Teams

If you're a PM trying to stay aligned while juggling shifting priorities, here are a few questions worth asking as you plan your next quarter:

• Where do your OKRs live?
• How often do product teams revisit them and why?
• Do your roadmaps and goals speak the same language?
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“One thing I’d recommend is doing a real review of your quarterly plans. Ask: are these the right things to work on? Or are there items in the backlog that might move the needle more? That reflection step is often skipped, especially when teams are rushing to finalize their plan.”

— Daniele

PMs make so many decisions daily that it can be easy to get lost in the weeds. But taking the time to think at the big picture level helps make sure the ship is going in the right direction.

Strategy That Stays Alive

This isn’t just about tracking progress. It’s about building a product organization where strategy is visible and actionable—every week, not just every quarter.

When OKRs are treated as living inputs, not static artifacts, they unlock clarity, autonomy, and momentum across teams. And when they’re embedded inside your tools and workflows, they stop being aspirational and start becoming operational.

Want to see how Productboard brings OKRs to life?

[Watch how we align strategy and execution from inside the platform →]