A project management OKR holds up when it improves how projects run: predictability, scope control, visibility.
Project management and OKRs get confused constantly, so the line matters: milestones and deadlines are project tracking; OKRs are for improving the system that delivers them. Predictability, scope discipline and reporting quality are outcomes a PM team can own across every project it touches.
If a key result reads like a milestone with a date, it belongs in the project plan. The examples below keep the OKRs on the delivery system itself, which is where a project organisation compounds.
For the individual project manager, the same system outcomes apply, scoped to the projects on their desk.
Objective: Make our delivery dates mean something
Level: Team Team: Project management Role: Project manager
Coach’s score ★★★★★
Measurable ★★★★★
Outcome-based ★★★★★
Focused ★★★★★
Niklas Olsson · OKR coach
A milestone is binary and belongs to one project; a key result measures a property of how you deliver, across projects: hit rate on commitments, slip days, scope added mid-flight. Projects finish; the delivery system either improves or it does not.
The things stakeholders actually complain about: dates that move, scope that creeps, status nobody trusts. Turn each into a measured rate with a baseline and the PM role stops being administration and starts being a system owner.
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This is a bit of a vague objective: "Make our delivery dates mean something." Maybe it is meant to be catchy, but it kind of misses the mark on explaining why this is important, or what issue this team is trying to solve with this OKR. The same issue flows a little into the key results, like raising milestones hit within a week of commitment from X to Y. Sometimes wording like this makes sense to the team, but from an outsider's perspective it is a bit tricky to navigate what they are actually trying to achieve.
The takeaway is that it is easy to use smart phrasing or fun wording in the key results, but you get bigger impact and more clarity if you keep them very straightforward. Beyond that, of course, these are clear on what they look like: quite outcome-based and focused, and definitely all of the key results are measurable.