How to articulate work against business objectives

OKRs are nice for tracking and measuring them, but they do not explain how to achieve them.

Trying random product ideas will generate a lot of waste, and will have a very low probability of success.

You need a highly-skilled and entreprenerial people to be able to fill the gap from the goals with measurable metrics to strategy, plan and execution. Basically you work like a research scientists, making a series of experiments, until you find an idea which moves your KRs.

This is how I see it:

  Mission
    Objectives
      KRs                            (= goals + measurable metrics)
        Problems/Jobs/Opportunities  (Problem-space, JTBD, OST)
          Ideas                      (Solution-space, Strategy, how to achive KR)
            Step-Projects            (Validation/De-Risking/Experiment or feature delivery)
              Scopes                 (list of related tasks)
                Tasks                (TODOs)

Terms & Abbreviations:

  KRs:  Key Results
  JTBD: Jobs-To-Be-Done
  OST:  Opportunity Solution Tree
 

Also see GIST (Goals-Ideas-Steps-Tasks) framework:

https://itamargilad.com/gist-framework/

"This might sound simple, but I think it’s harder than it seems to..."

This 100% – There is so much nuance to getting this right. Aligning:

Strategy (Business/Product) -> OKRs -> Opportunities -> Work

is never done well. I'm working to solve this problem with https://vistaly.com – by taking a very visual (and connected) approach to the problem, which is where, in my experience, alignment starts to break down.

I'm a fan of OSTs for helping with this (https://www.producttalk.org/opportunity-solution-tree/)

What do you mean by “work against business objectives”?