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1. What are the different types of users?

Access
ActionsLiteFullAdmin
Create, edit and delete OKRs and KRs assigned to yourself or your team
Create, edit and delete OKRs and KRs assigned to any user or team
Create and edit new users
Delete users
Comment on OKRs and KRs
Edit your team information
Edit information for any team
Invite other users
Create custom OKR views
Create teams
Create positions
Update OKRs and KRs assigned to yourself or your team
Update OKRs and KRs assigned to any user or team
Create cycles


2. What is an “Organization” OKR and how do they differ from “Team” OKRs?

The “organization” type OKRs are the main objectives that the organization defines within a given cycle. They are the ones that define the north and the line to which all the OKRs of the cycle must align.

Unlike team OKRs, to these OKRs in theory the entire organization (teams and/or individuals) should contribute, precisely with team OKRs or individual OKRs.



3. What are the differences between the different types of OKRs?

At Volo there are four types of OKRs:

A.   Qualitative: it is the one used for qualitative objectives, on which one or more key results will depend.

B.   Metric (quantitative)

  • It is the type of OKR par excellence.

  • These OKRs allow you to define both rates or proportions metrics (“Achieve a 3% conversion rate in non-paying users”) and volumes (“Get 1,000 new active users”).

    • In the case of metrics of the first type, the “Initial value” field can be useful, indicating the starting point from which to start.

      • In this way, being at 50% will imply having reached half the difference between the initial value and the target value.

    • In the case of volume metrics, the initial value should be set to 0, to avoid negative measurements in the first instances of the period.

C.   Project (quantitative)

  • It's our second favorite type of OKR.

  • It is advisable to use it when it is not possible to answer the question “What do we want to achieve?” with a result, but we can answer the question “What do we have to do?”.

  • A project in Volo is defined by tasks, each with an owner and a weight.

  • The weight that the tasks have will allow us to understand what it means for a project to be at 10, 20, or 38%, for example, since as the progress of each one is loaded, the total progress of the same can be calculated.

D.   Task (quantitative)

  • It is the last resort to use, when it refers to a very specific initiative, which does not require much effort or time, and which is not worth decomposing into other tasks.

  • Despite being defined as a task, its progress is measured from 0% to 100% and accepts intermediate values.

  • This type of OKRs should be the least used within the organization.



4. What does it mean that one OKR is aligned to another?

That one OKR is aligned to another means that there is a hypothesis of a strong relationship between the result that is aligned and the result to which it is aligned.

For example:

OKRs
Improve conversion rate from 1.5% to 1.9%
Reduce rejection rate by 30%

one or more factors caused OKR1 to be met, even though OKR2 was not met.

These types of cases are the ones that, after the quarter, should be analyzed by the teams to better understand how the results chosen as OKRs behave.

Working with objectives implies making hypotheses and assuming assumptions on which one operates, but which do not necessarily have to be true.

What the alignment relationship facilitates is precisely being able to make explicit these cause-effect relationships between different results, so that the teams in the organization can contribute and co-construct the organizational results that arise.



5. How should the weight of an OKR be used?

The weight of an OKR is an indicator to determine the relative weight that the progress of that metric will have on the objective or qualitative OKR on which it depends, compared to the progress of the other OKRs that depend on that same objective.

Let's see two cases.

Case 1:

WeightRelative WeightKR type
Significantly improve our purchasing process
Decrease rejection rate by 30%533,3%Métrica
Add 3 additional payment methods533,3%Proyecto
Resolve the top 3 usability issues in the purchase flow533,3%Proyecto

The qualitative objective is such because it does not have a defined improvement metric.

In this case, the progress on that objective must be given by the progress of its three assigned OKRs.

The weight determines the relative importance of the progress of each key result in the progress of the qualitative objective.

Since the weight for all three assigned OKRs is 5, all progress will contribute equally to the qualitative objective.

For example, if OKR2 advances 100% and OKR1 and OKR3 have no progress, the progress of the qualitative objective would be 33.33%.

Case 2:

WeightRelative WeightKR type
Significantly improve our purchasing process
Decrease rejection rate by 30%533,3%Metric
Add 3 additional payment methods853,3%Project
Resolve the top 3 usability issues in the purchase flow213,3%Project

Here, the weights are different, which determines that the progress is not equal.

In other words, given the same situation as the previous example, if OKR2 is achieved 100% and OKR1 and OKR3 do not make any progress, the progress of the qualitative objective would be 53.3%.

Case 3:

WeightKR type
Improving our customer service
Reduce total response time from 13 to 8 hours5Metric
Achieve that 90% of calls are answered within 5 minutes10Metric
Provide 20 hours of training in March to 100% of the team0Project
Communicate the new reporting method to the entire company0Task

In this case, out of the 4 KRs, we could say that only OKR1 and OKR2 could have an impact on the OKR in the current quarter.

OKR3, in essence, is about building capacity, but assigning a specific weight to its contribution to the progress of the OKR in the quarter could be overly ambitious. It could be the case that the strategy to achieve OKR1 is precisely the training of customer service agents, in which case aligning OKR3 with OKR1 (along with other OKRs that could also align with OKR1) would be beneficial.

OKR4 is simply a minor effort compared to the rest of the OKRs, but it may be included due to the relevance of communicating it to the entire company. In terms of its contribution to the OKR, its weight would be 0 because it would be unrealistic to establish a direct link between completing it and improving customer service.



6. About deleting OKRs or KRs

You can always delete OKRs or KRs.

In the event that they are objectives in state "ONGOING", the progress they generated will be deducted from the OKRs they were contributing to. This change will be visible in the history section of these last OKRs.

In the event that an OKR or KR is not going to be continued during the current period, our recommendation is not to delete it, but to leave it in the "SUSPENDED" status so that it can later be part of the evaluation at the end of the period. It is important for the team to reflect on why that OKR was included as an objective and then it was decided not to continue with it.

when an OKR or KR is deleted, it is no longer possible to access its history.



7. What does the linear progress series mean in the OKR or KR charts?

On the visualization page of each OKR and KR, the progress graph is drawn, in which a red dotted line with the title “ideal” will always be seen.

This line represents the constant progress that would need to be made in each unit of time in order to reach the goal at the end of the period.

The horizontal axis of the graph is time measured in %, and the vertical axis is progress on the goal, also measured in %.

For this reason, the ideal line means that x% of a certain time progress corresponds to the same x% progress on the objective.

In practice, it will hardly be the case that the same trajectory is followed, but what this line enables is to be able to answer, at any time during the time period, how we are progressing with respect to the accumulated progress of time.



8. How does billing account for the number of users?

59.

The pricing scheme is as follows:

User amountPrice
From 1 to 250 usersUSD 2 per user per month
From 251 users onUSD 500 per month


9. What are the restrictions on the definition of Start date and Due date in an OKR or KR?

Cycles define the maximum range for OKRs

In Volo, defining a cycle implies defining its start date and its due date.

This means that no OKR belonging to this cycle can have an earlier start date or a later due date. That is, all OKRs must be contained within the date range specified by the cycle in which they will occur.

The OKRs define the range for the KRs and OKRs that depend on it

Similar to what happens with dates in cycles, the definition of an OKR involves the definition of a due date and a start date.

All KRs that depend on an OKR must have a start date that is greater than or equal to the OKR start date, and a due date that is greater than or equal to the OKR due date.

The same goes for OKRs that depend on this OKR.

In essence, an OKR cannot be affected by what happens outside the period in which we define it.



10. What are the different status an OKR can have?

StatusDefinition
PLANNED

It is an automatically assigned status that occurs when an OKR is set to start in a future date. It will remain in a PLANNED state until the day before its start date.

OKRs in this state can be edited without restrictions as long as the start date and due date follow the rules on dates defined in (9).

ONGOING

It is a status that is assigned automatically in the first instance when the current date is between the start date and the due date of the OKR.

When an OKR is created in a cycle that has already started and with a start date prior to today's date, it will be created with the status ONGOING.

It can also be manually assigned when an OKR is in the ABANDONED state.

OKRs in this state can be edited without restrictions as long as the start date and due date follow the rules on dates defined in (9).

ABANDONED

It is a status that is manually assigned when it is decided that an OKR will no longer be worked upon.

These OKRs are also included for analysis in the Final Quarter Review process.

These OKRs do not support edits, but they can be switched back into ONGOING status and then edited.

CLOSED

It is a status that is automatically assigned when the current date is after the OKR due date.

OKRs in this status cannot be edited and their status cannot be changed.



11. Are views private or public?

“OKRs in SCHEDULED status”.

These views are private and only accessible by the user who creates them.

There is no limit to the views that can be created and it is possible to delete them.



12. I want to delete a cycle but the application won't let me. Why?

To be able to delete a cycle, it is necessary that there is no OKR within that cycle. It is a security measure to prevent the massive deletion of OKRs.

Once each of the OKRs within that cycle has been deleted, the cycle can be deleted.



13. Can I edit the start and due date of a cycle?

The dates of a cycle are not editable.

If the cycle has OKRs in it, you can instead generate another cycle with the corrected dates, and duplicate the OKRs individually to the new cycle.

If the cycle has no OKRs, it can simply be deleted.



14. Can I add external users to my organization?

At the moment it is not possible to add external users to an organization in Volo.



15. Can I change my organization's domain at Volo?

To change the domain of an organization (domain.volo.team) an administrator of the organization must send an email to [email protected] detailing the change.

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