How Agile and OKRs Work Together?

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Introduced in the 80s by Andrew Grove, known as the “Father of OKR”, the approach of setting up measurable goals had really taken off on the brick of the new century when Google adopted OKRs. Praised for its efficiency in pursuing bold missions by keeping everyone’s focus and awareness on the same page - on the most important topics - the OKRs framework is now applied by tech giants such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Microsoft, among many others.The Agile processes to project management represent the means and adopted work methods on a team level. On the other hand, the OKRs represent the value outcomes we aim to achieve and set the path of our business direction. 

The coexistence of the two philosophies hides the potential to continuously align work with the company’s mission, boost employee engagement, and bring more focus to work.While the Agile mindset calls for the delivery of a working software more frequently, embracing changes and adjusting towards effectiveness, OKRs suggest the same for objectives.

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By generating more business results in a short period, timely evaluation, and leaving room for improvement in an Agile environment, OKR enables agility in terms of goal setting.OKRs help Agile teams track progress and make necessary changes along the way and narrow down the focus and team efforts toward a specific objective. Eliminating the potential widening of our goals’ scope is essential in following our set company path.Applying the Agile mindset with the OKR framework enables achieving business agility through: Employee engagement by letting people self-organize Enhanced transparency by using visualization techniques Goal alignment by regular evaluation of the results In the study, examples from both the world and Turkey will be given and opinions will be given on how to use OKR and Kanban methods more effectively.

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Bio

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He graduated from Okan University Industrial Engineering Department in 2012 . He received his master's degree from Gebze Technical University in 2014 and his doctorate from Marmara University's Industrial Engineering Department in 2018. Since 2012, he has worked in companies such as Allianz Insurance, Aegon Pension, Koç Digital, Turkcell with the titles of information technology business analyst, scrum master and finally agile coach. After 2018, Dr. He teaches part-time universities as a lecturer. He works as OKR and Agile Koç at Agesa Emeklilik ve Hayat.

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