Everyone Agreed on the Goal. Nobody Agreed on What It Meant.

OKRs are easy to write and hard to write well. The difference shows up a quarter later, when you find out whether anyone changed what they did because of them.

Completing this class earns you the Scrum Alliance® Agile OKRs Microcredential.

Goals That Survive the Quarter

Most OKR programmes fail the same way: the objectives are aspirations, the key results are a to-do list, and by week three everyone is back to doing what they were doing anyway.

This is a working day on writing them properly — and on the harder question of how they meet Scrum, where a sprint goal and a key result can either reinforce each other or quietly compete.

Where SMART goals help, and where they quietly cap ambition
Strategy that cascades without turning into a chain of command
Writing an OKR set you could actually be measured against
How OKRs and Scrum fit — and where they pull against each other
The antipatterns, named, so you can spot yours

You leave with a draft OKR set for your own team, critiqued in the room.

In development

No dates yet. Join the wait list to hear when they open.

What you'll learn

What makes a goal useful, and what SMART gets right and wrong
How strategic intent cascades into team-level objectives without becoming assignments
Writing objectives that are directional and key results that are measurable
Reading an OKR set critically — including your own
Where OKRs strengthen Scrum, and where a key result starts competing with a sprint goal
The common antipatterns: output as outcome, sandbagging, and OKRs as a performance review

Who this is for

Scrum Masters and Product Owners asked to “do OKRs” without being told what good looks like
Managers and leaders accountable for goals they didn’t set
Team members who want to know why the quarterly goals never seem to mean anything
Anyone in any industry running a lightweight goal-setting framework

What you get

4 hours of live, high-engagement training
A drafted OKR set for your own team, critiqued in the room
Your Scrum Alliance® microcredential badge, which doesn’t expire
A 2-year Scrum Alliance® membership
Discounted access to all future Artisan training events

The fine print

Agenda

One day, four working blocks. Each one ends with you writing something:

Goal-setting, honestly

Focus: Why most goals don’t change behaviour

What a goal is for
SMART goals: the strengths, and the ceiling
Outcomes versus outputs, with examples from real backlogs

Strategy and alignment

Focus: Getting from company intent to team objective

Cascading without commanding
Who owns an objective, and who owns a key result
Alignment as a conversation rather than a spreadsheet

Writing them

Focus: The part everyone skips

Drafting an objective for your own team
Key results that are measurable without being trivial
Critique in pairs, then as a room

OKRs and Scrum

Focus: Where the two frameworks meet

Sprint goals and key results in the same sentence
What a Product Owner does with an OKR
Antipatterns, named and diagnosed

One day, live. Times are Central and are confirmed when the cohort is scheduled.

Training formats

Live and instructor-led, in person or remote. A microcredential is short enough to take in a day and specific enough that a day is the right amount of time.

A student handbook you keep, with the exercises and room for notes

The Scrum Alliance® badge on completion, and a 2-year membership with it

Risk-free guarantee

Satisfaction is guaranteed. If, for any reason, you are dissatisfied with the class by the lunch break, let us know and we’ll refund your class fees. No questions will be asked.

Prerequisites

None. Some familiarity with Scrum will help, but the class assumes nothing.

Frequently asked questions

When does this run?

It doesn’t yet. This class is on the schedule to be built, and this page exists so you can say you want it.

Tell me you’re interested and I’ll write to you when the first cohort has dates — before it goes on the public schedule.

Do I need to be running Scrum to get value from this?

No. OKRs are a goal-setting framework, not a Scrum practice, and most of the day is about writing them well in any setting.

The final block is specifically about how they meet Scrum, which matters if you’re running both.