OKRIA API

An open-source API solution for managing and integrating OKRs, initiatives and activities into your applications.

Created by OKRIA: we help organizations set goals and achieve them with our open source tools and coaching solutions designed to better the OKR practice.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Getting started
• Appendix

Introduction

What is OKRIA?

OKR is a goal setting and strategic planning model designed to better the objectives and key results model popularized by John Doerr.

If you’re familiar with OKR, it’s pretty easy to summarize OKRIA (it’s in our name). OKRIA stands for Objectives and Key Results, Initiatives and Activities.

In the OKRIA model, we have explicitly delineated the (often compounded) process of planning initiatives and activities from that of setting objectives and key results. In doing so we have worked to define a more holistic strategic planning model. Following the OKR example, we’ve defined simple (but opinionated) rules for initiatives and activities planning:

Initiatives

Initiatives are the projects, products, or product features that will be undertaken to increase, decrease or maintain key results. Initiatives are:

• Clear in scope: i.e. specific in terms of channel, activity and feature.
• Segmented: i.e. specific in terms of audience.
• Deadlined: i.e. time-bound; completed for a specific date.
• Completable: i.e. they can be completed; done.

Activities

Activities are the actions we take towards completing initiatives. Activities are:

• Action-oriented: i.e. defined by the specific work performed.
• Resourced i.e. identifying the specific team, or resource responsible.
• Atelic i.e. represent an ongoing activity of business (one without a specific end in and of itself)

Put simply, we’ve extended OKR to help connect the dots (and ensure a clear separation) between the goals companies set and the work teams do to achieve them.

What is OKRIA API?

OKRIA is committed to offering free tools to help support the adoption of the model. You can learn more about OKRIA here. To help companies adopt the model in software applications, We've created this open-source Strapi based OKRIA management solution.

Use case

OKRIA API provides an API first CMS to help product managers and developers:

1. Create and manage OKRs
2. Plan initiatives and activities
3. Integrate these concepts with custom apps, or third-party tools

Features

OKRIA API has everything you need to get started:

• Strapi based CMS interface for product managers
• RESTful (or GraphQL) API for developers
• Authentication, User management, plugins, and more...

Learn more about the powerful Strapi CMS here for full documentation and features.

Getting started

Follow these step by step instructions to get started running OKRIA API in your local development environment:

1. Install

First, we'll install the required dependencies:

1.1. Install Strapi

First, install Strapi globally using npm.

npm i strapi -g

1.2 Install OKRIA API

The OKRIA API repo contains a package.json file with additional application dependencies as well as Strapi configuration files specific to the OKRIA API.

Clone the repo and install the dependencies as follows:

git clone git@github.com:okria/okria-strapi.git
cd okria-strapi
npm install

Note: If you intend to use OKRIA API in production (and develop it further) you may wish to fork the repo instead.

2. Run the application

Strapi includes a cli and a user interface to be accessed in the browser.

2.1 Run in development

To run Strapi and ORKIA API in development mode:

strapi develop

Note: To review all commands enter strapi.

2.2 Login as Administrator

You will then be provided with a URL as follows to access the interface in the browser http://localhost:1337.

Visit this URL in the browser, and follow the provided link to navigate to http://localhost:1337/admin to create an administrative account and access the interface for the first time.

3. Create and Manage

Once you've logged in you will be presented with the Strapi interface. You'll find 4 content types that will allow you to create OKR, initiatives and activities. Let's walk through the complete process so you can see how the OKRIA API works:

3.1 Create an initiative

The first thing we will do is create a master initiative. This typically is a project, product, product feature or another company initiative. We will use this to organize objectives and key results, and plan activities:

1. Click Initiatives in the sidebar and click the Add New Initiative button
2. Add an initiative name in the Initiatives field
   • e.g. Redesign of customer on-boarding experience
3. Set a date for the completion of this initiative (typically an annual or quarterly interval)
4. Initiatives also have Activities for now, let's leave this field array blank for now
5. Save your initiative by clicking the Save button
6. You can now access this and other initiatives by clicking Initiatives in the sidebar

3.2 Create an objective

Second, we'll create an objective for the initiative. An objective is a qualitative goal to give purpose to our initiative.

1. Click Objectives in the sidebar and click the Add New Objective button
2. Add an objective name in the Objective field
   • e.g. Release a more delightful onboarding experience
3. Set a goal date for the completion of this objective (corresponding the initiative date)
4. Select your previously created initiative using the Initiative field
5. Objectives also have Results (key results). Leave this field blank for now
6. Save your objective by clicking the Save button
7. You can now access this and other objectives by clicking Objectives in the sidebar

3.3 Create a metric

Before creating a key result we'll want to identify the key metrics which we'll use to measure our objective. A key metric is a quantitative measure which we will increase, decrease, or maintain through our activities and which will be used to measure achievement of our objective (as a key result).

1. Click Metrics in the sidebar and click the Add New Metric button
2. Add a metric name in the Metric field
   • e.g. customer onboarding support requests or customer onboarding completion rate
3. Add a unit in the Unit field
   • i.e. the unit name used for the type of metric
   • e.g. count or percentage
4. As relevant, add a unit symbol in the Symbol field
   • e.g. $, % or kg, etc.
5. If a symbol has been identified, we can also configure positioning for the symbol:
   1. Add a symbol Position i.e. before or After
   2. Indicate if the symbol requires a space between the metric value i.e. 10 kg or 23.4%
6. Once you have completed all the required fields, save the metric.
7. You can now access the metric by clicking Metrics in the sidebar

3.4 Create key results

Once an objective and one or many key metrics have been created you can begin to define key results. Key results allow you to define the quantitative evidence that an objective has been achieved.

1. Click Objectives in the sidebar and navigate to edit your previously created objective
2. Under Result click Add new entry to add a key result
3. Select a Direction for your key metric
   • e.g. increase, decrease, or maintain
4. Select a Metric you created in the previous step
5. Identify the Start value and a Goal value used to grade achievement
6. Set a Date for the key result (considering the goal date of the objective)
7. Add additional key metrics (typical 2-3) by clicking Add new entry
8. Save the objective to save your key results

3.5 Log metrics

In order to grade our objectives our results need to be measured, and so we need to log metrics. The key metric content type allows you to add dated logs. These logs can be used to calculate the actual (or final) value of a key result (e.g. comparing the actual result to the goal result considering the start result, goal date, and log date).

1. Click Metric in the sidebar to navigate to access your previous Metric
2. Under Log click Add new entry to add a log
3. Set the Date for the log (current date or date of measurement)
4. In the Value field enter the current state value of the metric
5. Multiple logs can be added to allow measurement for key results at different intervals
6. Save the metric to save your logs

3.6 Create resources

To complete planning our initiative activities we will have to engage team teams or team members (our key resources).

1. Click Resources in the sidebar and click the Add New Resource button
2. Add a resource name in the Resource field
   • e.g. marketing team, product team, or sales team
3. Save your resource

3.7 Create activities

Now we will return to our initiative to define the activities that will be required to complete the initiative.

1. Click Initiatives in the sidebar and navigate to edit your previously created initiative
2. Under Activity click Add new entry to add an activity
3. Select a previously created Resource from the list e.g. design team
4. Identify a Task that the selected resource must do to complete this initiative
   • e.g. wireframe a new onboarding experience
5. Estimate the amount of time the task will take by identifying:
   1. The activity Cadence
      • i.e. the time interval typically used to estimate this type of task
      • e.g. day,week,sprint, etc.
   2. An Estimate corresponding to the cadence
      • e.g. 2 days or 2 sprints, etc.
6. Save your initiative to save your activities.

4. API

Now that you have created example objectives, key results, initiatives and activities you will be able to interact with this content via a RESTful API. This will allow you to integrate the content in front-end or third-party applications.

4.1 Manage permissions

In production, it will be important to ensure proper authentication of the API endpoint to ensure the security of critical data. While testing in our local environment, however, we'll use a public endpoint as a proof of concept.

To configure access to the various endpoints, we'll use the administrative interface:

1. In the sidebar click Roles & Permissions
2. Navigate to Public to manage public user role access
3. In the permissions section of the page, we'll activate the find permission for the resource endpoints we wish to access. In this case:
   • Initiative
   • Metric
   • Objective
   • Resource
4. Once the find permissions have been selected, click Save

5.1 Test endpoints

We can now access endpoints for each of our content types in the browser or using an API tool (e.g. Postman) to consume the input content, via any front-end or third-party application.

• Find all metrics via a GET request to http://localhost:1337/metrics
• Find all objectives via a GET request to http://localhost:1337/objectives
• Find all initiatives via a GET request to http://localhost:1337/intiatives
• Find all resources via a GET request to http://localhost:1337/resources

Appendix

OKRIA API is new, but we will continue to enhance the offering with further customization to the Strapi interface, documentation, and use case example (including code). For now, please feel free to reach out with comments or questions and to browse the resources below to explore further.

Additional documentation

1. Strapi documentation
2. Introduction to OKRIA concepts using the OKRIA canvas

Authentication

To access the API securely, you'll want to set up authentication using one of the recommended authentication methods.

The process is (at a high level) as follows:

1. Navigate to the Roles & Permissions page and set authenticated user permissions.
2. Create a user with the authenticated user role
3. Retrieve PWT token with POST request passing user identifier and password to the http://localhost:1337/auth/local endpoint (note: parameters should be passed in the request body)
4. Access content endpoints with token in header (bearer token)

Deployment and database

Deploying Strapi to production can be achieved with a range of possible hosting and database configurations.

Additional users and roles

Before on-boarding product managers or other user roles to the OKRIA API, you should create a safe permission set that ensures users can create content, but not manage other administrative functions.

We recommend creating a manager role, restricting access to the following permission categories:

• CONTENT-MANAGER
  • Contenttypes
  • Generalsettings
  • Groups
• CONTENT-TYPE-BUILDER
  • Contenttypebuilder
  • Groups
• EMAIL
  • All
• USER-PERMISSIONS
  • User (all except me)
  • Userpermissions (all except init)