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If you haven't kept up with management jargon, you might wonder what we are referring to with the phrase OKR Software Tools. But OKR isn't a new acronym, dreamed up by a fresh-faced marketing graduate. Indeed, you can trace OKR as far back as the early managerial thinker Peter Drucker, who introduced the better-known Management by Objectives (MBOs) system in the 1950s. MBO involves setting objectives for everybody in a company, laying out the "contributions a given individual and their unit are expected to make to help other units obtain their objectives."
Andy Grove of Intel later simplified the MBO system, but suggested businesses should set objectives as frequently as quarterly or even monthly. Then, in 1999, John Doerr introduced the system to Google. He emphasized the importance of having OKRs - Objectives and Key Results, i.e., not only setting objectives for your team members but also ways to measure the achievement of the objectives.
Companies of any size can implement OKRs. So, whether you're a multinational corporation or a solopreneur, you can follow the core principles of setting objectives with measurable key results. However, you can make life much easier with the right tools. And you might be surprised by some of the OKR software we examine here – you are possibly already using it. Here are some of the best OKR software tools you will find, with a mixture of free and paid plans depending on your needs.
8 of the Best OKR Software Tools for Result-Driven Marketers:
The Best OKR Software Tools (Free & Paid)
Pricing Plans: Range from Free to $A41.49/user/month Asana is project management software teams can use to stay organized and connected. You can choose the project view that suits your style and collaborate no matter where you are. Make sure your team has clarity and context from the get-go. Share goals, key resources, and more to set the stage for work and keep your team aligned. It features more than 200 integrations, so you can bring together everything your team needs to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate work from start to finish. Asana includes an Objectives and Key Results (OKR) template with milestones, custom fields, multi-homing, and start dates. You can use it to standardize your goal-setting process. It acts as a roadmap each time you set goals, prompting you to follow the same steps and document the same information each time. Having everyone on your team use the identical template ensures that each team member follows the proper steps to create quality goals. It ties in nicely with Asana’s Goals feature, an organization-wide tool that can help your entire company set, track, and communicate goals. Asana recommends you tie in your files in Dropbox, Google Workplace, or OneDrive. In addition, Asana integrates with Microsoft Teams, so you can search for and share the information you need without leaving Teams. Connect your Teams conversations to actionable items in Asana, and create, assign, and view tasks during Teams Meetings without needing to switch to your browser. Pricing Plans: $11/person/month (for Performance Management + OKRs & Goals). Pay extra to add on other modules. Lattice describes itself as a people success platform, helping leaders transform their approach to performance, engagement, and development. You can select from a range of products covering performance management, OKRs & goals, growth, engagement, analytics, and compensation. With Lattice, company OKRs and goals are integrated into employees’ daily routines to stay in mind and continuously guide work. You can set transparent goals that drive collaboration and business results. Then your team can track and reflect on your goals. Lattice integrates with Jira, Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft Teams to ensure goals stay front and center. Managers and business leaders can track goal status and progress to identify where to focus and keep your organization on track. Pricing Plans: Range from Free to $19/member/month ClickUp is rapidly becoming the Swiss Army knife of productivity tools, continually adding new features and expanding its remit. As it states on its website, “hundreds of powerful tools, one platform.” Arguably its main focus is on tasks, allowing you to break any sized project into customized tasks. However, as an OKR tool, it excels in helping you create trackable goals with clear timelines, measurable targets, and automatic progress tracking. ClickUp defines goals as high-level objectives that are made up of smaller, measurable targets. You complete all of the targets to finish your goal. It provides four target types: Number (movement between a range of numbers), True/False (using a Done/Not Done checkbox), Currency (progress towards a monetary goal), and Task (tracking completion of specified tasks). Once you act on a target, you can click the target name to update your progress. Your target will have different tracking options depending on which type you use. In addition, your goal progress percentage will automatically update as you update your targets. With ClickUp, you can keep your goals organized using Goal Folders. Then you can view your goals and other team metrics in one place by adding your goals to a Dashboard with the Goals Widget. Pricing Plans: Range from $4/user/month to $14/user/month. 15five Focus (which targets OKR management) costs $8/user/month 15Five is a suite of products you can use to transform employee engagement. Engage helps you tap into the pulse of your organization with evidence-based assessment and easy-to-use analysis tools. Perform enables you to measure performance and inspire growth with a modern, multifaceted approach to performance reviews. Engage makes OKRs and goal-setting easier than ever. And Transform is a blended learning solution designed to turn managers into leaders who know how to drive performance and employee engagement at the same time. If you want OKR software, then 15Five Engage is best for you, although if you have more significant needs, Engage is also included in the Total Platform enterprise plan. Engage helps clarify and track the top objectives for everyone across your organization. This ensures total organizational alignment, crystal-clear focus, and super-engaged teams. For example, you can set company OKRs, clarify your top objectives and charge everyone’s work with purpose. In addition, you can engage your team to make individual goals that align with the company objectives. Once everybody’s set their objectives, you can track the progress of your OKRs whenever you like, keeping everyone focused on what matters. Pricing Plans: Modular pricing that starts from $8/user/month. Leapsome consists of a series of modules: Performance, Align, Engage, Learn, and Reward. It aims to help businesses unite performance, engagement, and learning to build a thriving work culture. It is an all-in-one people enablement platform. If your interest is OKR software, you will want to ensure you have the Align module. You can use it to track and collaborate on goals at all levels to create alignment, accountability, and transparency across the organization. You can track your company’s goals regardless of what process or framework you use. Connect individual, team, and company goals to generate a goal tree highlighting ownership and dependencies on the path to success. Goal dashboards and progress timelines help you increase accountability across the organization, and you can update them in real time, filtering by the owner, contributor, and team. Keep track of issues you’re working on, or have already completed, to achieve your goals, ensuring that the day-to-day work connects with the overall strategy. Pricing Plans: Range from Free (for up to 5 users) to $9/user/mo, as well as custom pricing for Enterprises. Profit.co offers specialist OKR management software. They describe themselves as a one-size-fits-all solution that helps you execute your strategy faster. You can use their OKR software to prioritize goals, save time, engage employees and execute strategy with limited resources. You can use Profit.co to ensure everyone in your organization aligns their goals with your overarching company goals. Alignment dashboards help everyone understand the company’s goal and how they contribute to meeting it. You can keep track of seven types of key results to track any goal. For measurable outcomes, use Profit.co’s Measurable key result type, for those not measurable, use their Trackable key result types. In addition, you will find 400+ inbuilt and custom KPIs, so you can start setting your key results effortlessly. Weekly check-ins and reviews ensure that your team makes progress regularly and identifies problems, bringing them to the surface early. You can visually track progress and issues and course-correct with the company dashboard. Filter and export files from the dashboard to know each department’s achievement level. Real-time heatmaps allow managers to identify potential problems easily and push for progress. Pricing Plans: Don’t state their prices on their website, so contact the company for pricing. WorkBoard is a complete strategy execution stack. You can use it to align on strategy and OKRs, streamline scorecards and MBRs, focus weeklies on outcomes, and accelerate with progression analytics. You can either work with the complete WorkBoard Strategy Execution Platform or pick and choose the modules that most interest you. For example, if your focus is on OKRs, make sure you have WoBo Objectives. WoBo Objectives helps you adapt, align and focus teams on Objectives & Key Results (OKRs). Use the built-in OKR Canvas to create smart OKRs. Brainstorm with the team on objectives and results to align on the few most important outcomes. Use tips on the Canvas to find words that inspire and set significant measures of success. Then, you can share and measure OKRs seamlessly and transparently. You can even reflect and reset OKRs using OKR Canvas with handy reflection prompts and last quarter’s OKRs. Align OKRs vertically and laterally across functional teams, squads, and dynamic teams or individuals. Measure what really matters with genuine leading and lagging measurements. Add results fast and easily via the web, mobile, or chat, or update key results with data from existing systems. Teams see whether they’re on pace or not to achieve their intended outcomes. Pricing Plans: Range from $59/user/month to $149/user/month for Aha! Roadmaps. Can subscribe to other Aha! Products separately (starting at free for Aha! Create). Aha! Roadmaps is a complete product management solution (it also includes Aha! Ideas Essentials and Aha! Create Essentials), or you can buy add-ons separately. Modular products include Aha! Roadmaps (to set strategy, prioritize features, and share visual plans), Aha! Ideas (to crowdsource feedback, engage the community, and analyze trends), Aha! Create (to organize information, whiteboard concepts, and collaborate with the team), and Aha! Develop (to connect to the roadmap, optimize workload, and streamline reporting). The most useful Aha! Tool for OKR is Aha! Roadmaps. You can use it to take a goals-first approach; define what you want to achieve and how you will get there. Use the flexible workspace hierarchy in Aha! Roadmaps to represent the way your organization is structured and create relationships between goals and initiatives at each level. This establishes a goal-first framework. You can turn your strategy into a visual roadmap that aligns the entire organization around the timing and prioritization of work. In addition, it makes it easy to monitor progress and quickly report on critical business metrics.1. Asana
2. Lattice
3. ClickUp
4. 15Five
5. Leapsome
6. Profit.co
7. WorkBoard
8. Aha!
What Does OKR Software Do?
It's all very well setting objectives under an OKR framework, but unless you also find a way of measuring your key results, you have no way of knowing how successful you've been. You can use OKR software tools to define and record those metrics most important to your success.
For every objective, you have to set defined key results, i.e., how you intend to measure whether you meet the objective. Once you have qualified your objectives and key objectives, you can record them in your OKR software, updating your progress each time you work towards meeting your goals.
They are handy for teams, where managers can use OKR software to assign tasks to specific members of their groups. As a result, it becomes easy to align individual OKRs with your overall company goals. Remember, a core tenet of Management by Objectives is that every team member sets personal objectives to follow.
Benefits of Using OKR Software
OKR software helps you set, communicate, track, and measure goals and results within your business. In addition, the tools allow managers to see both individual and company-wide progress toward achieving these objectives.
You can use the OKR software to give your team a clear direction and a path toward meeting goals. You keep a permanent record, minimizing the need to rely on memory and reducing the opportunities for errors. Once your employees commit to objectives and keep a record of the results, you can focus on their accountability. You can even include it as part of their performance management processes.
OKR software can save you time and simplify the tasks of HR management. The best products are intuitive, simple, easy to use, and offer transparency so that every team member can access the agreed goals and know the areas in which they must work.
