Establishing engineering KPIs tied to company OKRs

At Heard, I established engineering KPIs tied to company OKRs, increasing feature delivery velocity by 12% and retention by 15%. The key was aligning engineering metrics with business outcomes.

The Problem

Traditional engineering metrics (lines of code, commits, velocity) don't connect to business value. We needed metrics that:

• Align with company goals
• Measure outcomes, not outputs
• Drive the right behaviors
• Are actionable

Our Approach

1. Start with Company OKRs Understand what the company is trying to achieve.

2. Map Engineering Work to OKRs Connect engineering initiatives to business outcomes.

3. Define Measurable KPIs Create metrics that track progress toward OKRs.

4. Review Regularly Weekly reviews, monthly deep dives, quarterly planning.

Example: User Retention OKR

Company OKR:

• Increase user retention by 20%

Engineering Contribution:

• Reduce time to value (onboarding)
• Improve product reliability
• Fix critical bugs faster

Engineering KPIs:

• Time to first value: < 5 minutes
• Uptime: > 99.9%
• Critical bug resolution: < 4 hours

KPI Dashboard

interface EngineeringKPIs {
  // Feature Delivery
  featureDeliveryVelocity: number; // features per week
  timeToMarket: number; // days from idea to production
  
  // Quality
  bugRate: number; // bugs per feature
  uptime: number; // percentage
  customerSatisfaction: number; // NPS score
  
  // Team Health
  retention: number; // percentage
  engagement: number; // survey score
  burnoutRisk: number; // calculated metric
}

function calculateKPIs(metrics: Metrics): EngineeringKPIs {
  return {
    featureDeliveryVelocity: calculateVelocity(metrics),
    timeToMarket: calculateTTM(metrics),
    bugRate: calculateBugRate(metrics),
    uptime: calculateUptime(metrics),
    customerSatisfaction: metrics.nps,
    retention: calculateRetention(metrics),
    engagement: metrics.engagementScore,
    burnoutRisk: calculateBurnoutRisk(metrics),
  };
}

Tracking and Reporting

Weekly Reviews

• Review KPIs vs targets
• Identify blockers
• Adjust priorities

Monthly Deep Dives

• Analyze trends
• Root cause analysis
• Action planning

Quarterly Planning

• Set new KPIs
• Align with company OKRs
• Plan initiatives

Results

• 12% increase in feature delivery velocity
• 15% increase in retention
• Better alignment with business goals
• More focused engineering work
• Improved team motivation

"What gets measured gets managed."

Lessons Learned

1. Align metrics with business outcomes
2. Measure outcomes, not outputs
3. Review regularly
4. Adjust based on results
5. Keep it simple

Common Pitfalls

• Too many metrics (focus on 5-7)
• Vanity metrics (measure what matters)
• Setting and forgetting (review regularly)
• Ignoring context (understand why metrics change)
• Gaming the system (prevent manipulation)