OKR Tracking Tool (free template)

I regularly get asked what my preferred OKR tracking tool is. I reply the same way for every tool question, “Use the tool that makes the most sense in your organization.” For some organizations this will be some software-based service like Workboard. For others it will be a simple kanban-style board tool like Trello. And for still others, it’s just a simple spreadsheet or similar document. 

In the spirit of shipping MVPs and giving you, at the very least, a solid starting point for thinking about your own OKR tracking needs and, at the very best, a tool you can start using today, I’ve put together a first draft of an OKR tracking spreadsheet using Google Docs. 

free okr Template

You can access the OKR tracking tool at this link. You’ll be able to make a copy of it and repurpose it for your own needs and you’ll be able to share it. In return I ask for only one thing — feedback. 

• What do you like about this spreadsheet? 
• What’s confusing? 
• What did I forget? 
• What should I add? 
• What would make it useful for you?

Leave your feedback in the comments section. 

What’s in the OKR tracking spreadsheet?

I tried to capture everything you’ll need to track for your OKR effort and nothing more. The parts of the objectives and key results process that the spreadsheet tracks are:

• Name of the team — Remember OKRs are a team goal-setting framework, not an individual person’s goals. For this reason you won’t find a “responsible person” field in the tool
  
• Team members — Names of the folks who are a part of this team
  
• Higher strategic theme/OKR/Purpose — What is the work this team is doing in service of? What strategic goal does this work support? How does this work fit into the overall corporate strategy?
  
• Objective — this is where each objective statement goes
  
• Date target — when do we hope to achieve the objective?
  
• Key Result — each success metric for the current objective goes here
  
• Progress (current expectation) — How are we progressing towards each key result? Where did we expect to be by now? The percentages are current values rather than percentage towards the goal. 
  
• Delta from last week — how are we trending from 7 days ago? This is intended to give the sense of whether the team is progressing towards their goal or away from it on a rolling 7-day basis. 
  
• Notes — anything that adds color or context to the OKR statement and current progress towards it. 
  
• Related activities, work and hypotheses — this is a place to capture any current initiatives the team is working on or considering to achieve the OKR. If a stakeholder was looking at this, these details should help answer the question, “What are you working on?”

Take a look. Make a copy and try it out. Let me know what you think. I’ll take all the feedback and publish a v2 shortly.