OKR at Binary Studio

OKR explained

1.5 years in the making

WHY?

1.Help people to develop their skills

2. that’s it

Company’s goals

Required characteristics

Transparent - should be clear to everyone

Public - should keep everyone in the loop

Unobtrusive - should not introduce complexity

Bottom-up - should embrace initiative

HOW?

OKRs - Objectives and Key ResultsObjective - goal a person wants to achieve

Key Results - results of actions taken to achieve the objective

OKR’s track record1970 1999

...

Objectives●Set by a person herself

●Set annually to outline long-terms goals for a person

●Revisited and refined quarterly

●Mentor with a person reviews OKRs outcomes every quarter

Objectives usually embrace

Ongoing project skills (e.g. redux framework or NodeJS knowledge)

English skills - pass test for certain level

General professional skills improvement (design patterns, algorithms)

Secondary professional skills (e.g. UI, QA)

Technical community activity (articles, open source)

Leadership and soft skills

Key Results●Measurable

●Self-assessed at the end of the period (0 - 1)

●Can be binary - 0 or 1

●Ambitious, so that normal performance would give 0.6 - 0.7

Typical Key Resultsobtain a certificate

read a book

develop a pet project

take an Academy PRO course

take a third-party course (coursera)

coach an Academy PRO

coach the Academy

write an article / create open-source module

Knowledge - improve existing skills

Expertise - gain completely new skills

Projects - achieve goals of the projects person aims to work on

KEP - Knowledge, Expertise & ProjectsJavaScript, C#, English

Big Data, UI, Web Security

SwissPhone, Academy Portal, UI ebook

OKR at Binary Studio

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wivCxy08hFrvl1Rm9j9rVOiXT3LBKtfmlmu_P8F_Nj4/edit?usp=sharing

OKR 2016 - Alex Kovalov

● Pilot project involving junior developers

● Will be expanded to middle developers later on

● Will be eventually expanded to seniors as well

WHAT’S MORE?

Developer Levels

Performance ReviewCompetency Test

Performance ReviewCompetency Test

Performance ReviewCompetency TestAcademy Coaching

Intermediate English

Upper-Intermediate EnglishExternal Certification

Upper-Intermediate EnglishExternal Certification

3.5+years

2+years

3+months

Middle

Senior

Junior

Academy graduate Pre-Intermediate English

Certifications

Binary Studio covers 70% of a certificate’s cost

Feel free to reach out to us if you are willing to get certified

Competency TestIs taken by engineers when they aim to level-up

Test task related to the day-to-day job

Has a set of evaluation criteria

Performance Review + 360 Feedbacks

360 feedbacks:

Colleagues to each other

Leads to team members

Team members to leads

Performance Review:

Quarterly meeting on performance

Outlines all the good moments

Outlines places for improvement

Feedback

Ideas, improvements, volunteering