Research And Development OKR Examples

The research and development (R & D) team allows graduate engineers to use their skills to push forward the boundaries of science and technology. The aim is to improve the current technologies offered by an organization or to develop innovations that strengthen the organization’s position in the marketplace.

R & D divisions are found in many forward-looking, innovative engineering and technologically driven organizations.

The pace of technology development is relentless. The timescales of R & D are entirely dependent on the project. There could be an immediate need to deliver equipment to a customer in a matter of weeks or months or there could be work on a project to develop basic technology that could take years to gain market acceptance.

A career in R & D involves working on intellectually stimulating projects while pushing forward the frontiers of technology development but is difficult to give a time frame for completion of ongoing projects. As a result OKRs for R & D need to be structured on fine-tuning existing products/processes, testing procedures involved, reduction in errors, etc.

Sample OKRs For Research And Development

Objective – Develop Key Technologies To Enhance Long Term Strategic Position Of The Company
Key Result 1: Keep abreast of industry trends in order to come up with superior products
Key Result 2: Attend atleast 2 workshops in a year to understand industry trends

Objective – Coordinate With Marketing Team To Understand Client Requirement
Key Result 1: Meet with marketing team beginning of every quarter to understand client needs
Key Result 2: Maintain a record of client needs versus product in pipeline and review every quarter

Objective – Launch New Product Architecture
Key Result 1: Present salient features of new product/technology to other teams within a week of project completion
Key Result 2: Develop atleast 5 tests along with Quality Assurance team to ensure feasibility of the Project

Objective – Drive Quality For Features For New Release
Key Result 1: Identify atleast 10 bugs in 1 month after project completion
Key Result 2: Test run the project after implementation of the QA processes
Key Result 3: Have 0 regressions by the end of the quarter on completion of the project

Objective – Launch A High-Quality Product Beta
Key Result 1: Work with the marketing team to ensure at least 10% of customers try the new product
Key Result 2: Get NPS (Net Promoter Score, which assesses customer loyalty) of 7

Objective – Work With Marketing Team To Launch New Product Successfully
Key Result 1: Conduct at least 2 training sessions with the marketing and sales team on the new product
Key Result 2: Ensure with marketing team conducts at least 30 customer development interviews
Key Result 3: Review 10 usage videos and summarise it internally

Objective – Improve Our Testing Procedures
Key Result 1: Implement test driven development in 3 new development teams
Key Result 2: Increase unit test coverage to 75% of code
Key Result 3: Conduct a security assessment of our codebase using automated tools

Objective – Create A High Performance R & D Team
Key Result 1: Hire 5 new R & D team members by the end of Q2 of current financial year
Key Result 2: Document performance measurement metrics for all individual contributions
Key Result 3: Increase knowledge and enhance skill sets of team members by ensuring everyone attends atleast one training session every 6 months

Objective – Take Steps To Improve The Quality Of The Product
Key Result 1: Reduce the number of critical bugs by 15%
Key Result 2: Increase stability of performance from 25% to 35%
Key Result 3: Create FAQ sheet which will enable customers to optimize the use of the product

Objective – Refactor Old User Management Module
Key Result 1: Discuss user management code usage with at least 5 engineers having used it in Production
Key Result 2: Rewrite and launch a new version of the user management module