Product and engineering teams often face a tug-of-war between rapid feature delivery and technical feasibility. Product managers want to move fast, ship features, and meet customer demands, while engineering teams focus on scalability, technical debt, and feasibility. It’s the classic “now vs. later” dilemma Product says “now,” Engineering says “later.”
But what if there was a superpower that could bridge this gap?
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) the superhero of goal-setting frameworks that bring clarity, alignment, and execution power to product and engineering teams. In the recent Profit.co webinar, “Fueling Product Growth with OKRs,” industry leaders shared their insights on how OKRs help align strategy, prioritize initiatives, and create a culture of shared ownership.
Let’s look into the key challenges teams face and how OKRs are game-changers for solving them.
The Real Superpower of OKRs: Clarity & Alignment
“If OKRs were a superhero, their superpower would be clarity and alignment,” said Jinal Dhruv, engineering leader at Joveo, during the webinar.
He explained how OKRs help break down silos and ensure that every team member, from a junior engineer to the CEO, understands why they are working on something.
Why is clarity so important?
One of the biggest challenges in product development is the lack of visibility into how day-to-day work contributes to business goals. Without clear alignment, teams work in isolation, leading to miscommunication, wasted effort, and friction between product and engineering.
How do OKRs solve this?
- Providing a shared language for priorities
- Ensuring that every feature, epic, or initiative is tied to a larger goal
- Helping teams track progress in a measurable way
When product and engineering teams align on a common set of OKRs, everyone moves in the same direction reducing friction and boosting execution speed.
Want to see how OKRs work in action?
Overcoming Common Product Development Challenges with OKRs
1. Too Many Ideas, Too Little Execution
“The biggest problem is not a lack of ideas but a lack of execution,” said Nethaji Karthik, a senior product leader at Profit.co.
Most product teams have endless feature requests, customer feedback, and innovation opportunities but limited resources. On the other hand, engineering teams need to focus on technical feasibility, scalability, and reducing tech debt. This results in a constant battle over priorities.
How do OKRs solve this?
- OKRs push teams to focus on what truly moves the needle
- Defines success clearly very early
- Engineering teams know which features have a business impact
- Product teams know what to prioritize
For example, Instead of setting an objective like “Launch three new AI features,” a better OKR would be: Enhance AI-driven product recommendations to boost user engagement. The key results can be
Key Result: Increase AI-driven feature adoption from 5% to 15%
Key Result: Reduce customer churn from 30% to 20%
This way, the engineering team is aligned with a real business outcome, not just another feature launch.
Misalignment Between Product & Engineering
A common scenario in tech companies is product teams setting ambitious goals while engineering teams struggle with technical constraints. Product managers focus on “what” needs to be built, while engineers focus on “how” it will be implemented.
As Bala, a senior product leader at SolarWinds, explained:
“The challenge is not just setting priorities but making sure everyone understands them. Product, engineering, marketing, and customer success should all be on the same page. OKRs provide that shared understanding.”
How do OKRs bridge the gap?
- Product OKRs focus on business impact like revenue growth, user adoption, engagement
- Engineering OKRs focus on execution aspects like performance, scalability, and technical stability
- Shared ownership and visibility as both teams work toward the same north star
By defining OKRs together, product and engineering co-own the outcomes, reducing friction and increasing alignment.
A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.
3. Lack of Measurable Success Metrics
Bad OKRs focus on tasks, and good OKRs focus on impact. One of the biggest mistakes teams make is confusing OKRs with to-do lists. If your OKRs look like this: Launch feature X, redesign the homepage, or implement an API upgrade, you’re doing it wrong. These are tasks, not outcomes.
These better OKRs focus on impact, such as increasing customer retention from 50% to 65%, reducing support ticket resolution time from 12 to 6 hours, or improving average session time from 3 to 7 minutes. With this approach, teams focus on why they are doing something rather than just checking off tasks.
How OKRs Keep Teams Connected to Business Goals
Aligning product and engineering isn’t just about execution, it’s about business outcomes.
OKRs create a clear connection between product development and revenue growth, making sure that teams don’t just build features for the sake of building but to drive measurable success.
Lets take this example,
If a company’s business OKR is to increase monthly recurring revenue (MRR) product and engineering can set aligned OKRs such as:
Product OKR: Increase conversion rate from free to paid users from 85% to 90%
Engineering OKR: Reduce checkout page load time from 4 seconds to 1 second
By tying execution to revenue, OKRs ensure that every feature, sprint, and initiative drives real business value.
Conclusion
OKRs Are the ultimate alignment superpower. OKRs are not just another goal-setting tool, they are a superpower that aligns product and engineering teams to execute faster, smarter, and with more significant impact.