IT OKR Examples: Turning Activities Into Measurable Outcomes

IT teams keep essential systems running, resolve technical issues and introduce tools that help the rest of the organisation work. Yet their contribution can be difficult to express in a way that clearly shows business impact.

An IT report may say that the team resolved 120 support tickets, deployed three new tools or completed a system upgrade. These figures show that work was completed, but they do not necessarily answer the questions leadership cares about most:

• Were important issues resolved faster?
• Did employees experience less disruption?
• Did the new tools improve workflow or reduce errors?
• Did system reliability improve?

This is where well-designed IT OKRs can help. They connect technical work to the outcomes it is intended to create, giving the team and leadership a clearer definition of success.

IT OKRs are Objectives and Key Results used to focus an IT team on a meaningful improvement and measure whether that improvement is happening.

The Objective describes what the team wants to improve. It should provide direction without becoming a list of technical tasks. The Key Results define the evidence that will show whether the Objective has been achieved.

For example:

Objective: Deliver a faster and more dependable support experience for employees.

Key Result: Increase the percentage of critical tickets resolved within 24 hours from 60% to 85% by the end of the OKR cycle.

The Objective gives the team a clear direction. The Key Result provides a baseline, target and time frame that can be reviewed throughout the cycle.

This follows an important OKR principle: Key Results should measure progress towards an outcome, not simply record the activities completed. Atlassian’s OKR guidance similarly recommends making Key Results specific, measurable and outcome-orientated rather than activity-based.

If your organisation is new to the framework, our guide to what OKRs are and how they work explains the relationship between Objectives, Key Results and business priorities.

Operational data remains important. Ticket volume, deployment counts and completed maintenance work help IT managers understand workload and capacity. The problem arises when these figures are treated as complete evidence of success.

Consider the difference:

An activity tells us what the team did. An output shows what was delivered. An outcome shows what changed because of that work.

Outputs are not unimportant. A system must be deployed before anyone can use it, and a technical issue must be addressed before service can recover. However, an output alone may not show whether the work created the intended value.

During a client coaching session, a CEO raised a challenge that is common among functional departments such as IT, administration and audit: how can these teams quantify their impact when they do not directly own sales or revenue?

The IT team’s original Objective was to improve internal user satisfaction and strengthen technical capabilities. The direction was reasonable, but the team was unsure how to measure progress.

One of the team’s initial statements was:

We resolved 120 support tickets this week.

That number described workload and output. It did not reveal whether the most important problems were being solved quickly enough or whether internal users were receiving a better service.

Instead of immediately prescribing a metric, Catherine guided the IT lead through several questions:

1. What would make you feel that internal user satisfaction had genuinely improved?
2. How quickly are high-priority issues being resolved today?
3. If the team had four months to improve, what change would be meaningful?

Through that discussion, the IT lead proposed a clearer Key Result:

Increase the percentage of critical tickets resolved within 24 hours from 60% to 85%.

This was a proposed target for the OKR cycle, not a claim that the result had already been achieved. Its value was that the team had translated a broad aspiration into a measurable definition of improvement.

The revised Key Result is more useful because it contains four elements.

It also changes the management conversation. Instead of asking only how many tickets were closed, the team can discuss:

• which critical issues remain unresolved;
• what is delaying resolution;
• whether certain incidents repeatedly affect the same teams;
• what decisions or resources are needed; and
• whether faster resolution is improving the internal user experience.

One metric should not be viewed in isolation. A team could improve response speed while quality declines or the same issues continue to return. Depending on the Objective, the resolution measure may need to be balanced with user satisfaction, recurrence, reliability or service quality.

The following examples are illustrative. Each organisation should replace the sample numbers with verified baselines and realistic targets based on its systems, service levels and business priorities.

Objective: Provide a faster and more dependable support experience for internal users.

Possible Key Results:

• Increase the percentage of critical tickets resolved within 24 hours from 60% to 85%.
• Reduce repeat incidents relating to the three most common support problems by 25%.
• Improve the internal support satisfaction score from 3.8 to 4.4 out of 5.

The number of tickets closed can remain an operational metric, but these Key Results provide a clearer view of speed, problem prevention and user experience.

Objective: Build a more resilient technology environment for critical business operations.

Possible Key Results:

• Reduce unplanned downtime for critical systems from six hours to two hours per quarter.
• Reduce the average recovery time for priority-one incidents from 90 minutes to 45 minutes.
• Resolve 90% of high-risk infrastructure vulnerabilities within the agreed remediation period.

Server upgrades, failover tests and monitoring improvements may be important initiatives supporting this Objective. They should not automatically be treated as proof that resilience has improved.

Objective: Help employees use internal systems more effectively and complete key workflows with less friction.

Possible Key Results:

• Increase active use of the approved workflow system among the target user group from 55% to 80%.
• Reduce the average time required to complete a selected internal process from 30 minutes to 18 minutes.
• Reduce user errors in the selected workflow by 35%.

Deploying the system and conducting training are likely to be initiatives. Adoption, time saved and error reduction provide stronger evidence that the system is creating value.

Do not begin with the tool the team plans to deploy. Begin with the problem that needs to improve.

Instead of: Implement a new ticketing platform.

Ask: What problem should the new platform solve for users or the business?

The answer may relate to slow resolution, poor visibility, recurring incidents or inconsistent prioritisation.

Decide what should become better if the team’s work succeeds. Useful areas may include:

• resolution time;
• system availability;
• recovery time;
• adoption;
• user satisfaction;
• error rate;
• security exposure; or
• time required to complete an internal process.

The selected measure should have a clear relationship with the Objective.

A target is difficult to assess without knowing the current position. Confirm how the baseline was calculated, what period it covers and whether the data is consistent.

For example, “improve resolution speed” is vague. “Reduce median resolution time for critical incidents from 14 hours to eight hours” gives the team a clear starting point and target.

Avoid setting a numerical target simply because it sounds ambitious. The baseline, operational constraints and importance of the improvement should guide the target.

IT teams support different systems, users and levels of urgency. A broad measure such as average ticket resolution time can become misleading if minor password resets are mixed with critical service disruptions.

Clarify:

• which users or departments are included;
• which systems are covered;
• what qualifies as a critical issue;
• how the measurement period is defined; and
• where the data will come from.

A measurable Key Result normally needs a defined destination and review period.

Use a structure such as:

Improve [metric] from [baseline] to [target] by [time frame].

Not every Key Result must use this exact sentence, but the team should be able to determine objectively whether progress has occurred.

Key Results measure the change. Initiatives are the work intended to create that change.

Separating the two gives the IT team flexibility. If an initiative does not move the Key Result, the team can change its approach without changing the intended outcome.

For a broader rollout process, see our step-by-step OKR implementation guide.

Outcome measures are generally more useful because they show whether meaningful change occurred. However, not every strategically important result can be observed within one OKR cycle.

A mandatory migration, regulatory requirement or foundational infrastructure project may need milestone-based measures when the longer-term operational outcome will appear later. In these cases, the team should be explicit about what the milestone represents and, where possible, pair it with a quality, adoption or readiness measure.

For example:

• Milestone: Complete the migration of all critical applications by the agreed date.
• Readiness measure: Achieve successful recovery testing for 100% of migrated critical applications.
• Early outcome measure: Maintain service availability above the agreed threshold during the transition.

The goal is not to ban outputs. It is to avoid assuming that completion automatically equals value.

Before approving an IT OKR, ask:

1. What user or business improvement does this measure represent?
2. Are we measuring an outcome, an output or an activity?
3. Do we have a reliable baseline?
4. Is the target meaningful and achievable within the cycle?
5. Can the team influence the measure?
6. Can progress be reviewed regularly rather than only at the end?
7. Could the metric improve while the real user experience becomes worse?
8. Which initiatives are expected to move this result?

These questions turn OKR drafting into a useful management conversation. The purpose is not to make every goal more complicated. It is to ensure that the team and leadership agree on what success means.

IT teams should not have to justify their value through activity counts alone. By connecting technical work to reliability, speed, adoption, risk reduction and user experience, IT OKRs create a more useful conversation between technical teams and business leaders.

The process begins with a simple shift in questioning. Instead of asking only, “What did the team complete?”, ask, “What became better because of the team’s work, and how will we know?”

The strongest Key Results are not imposed simply to satisfy a reporting requirement. They are developed through discussion, supported by reliable data and understood by the people responsible for achieving them.

If your IT or functional teams are struggling to move from task-based goals to measurable outcomes, our team can help you clarify priorities, facilitate OKR drafting and prepare teams for their first working cycle.

Explore our OKR coaching and implementation services or contact us to discuss your organisation’s current goal-setting challenges.

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