Measure for Success with OKRs | DevRel Sucess Measures

This is the second post in a series on DevRel success measures. Read the introduction here.

Many audience-focused teams fall into the “activity trap” – they measure their accomplishments with an impressive count of events attended, talks given, or articles they published rather than their business impact. Activity metrics are comforting because they’re easy to track but they miss answering the core question that leadership is asking (whether directly or indirectly): “What value is this creating for our business?”

I’ve found myself in this trap myself many times – whether by my own hand as an early manager or by programs I’ve inherited when taking on new team members. Over the years, I’ve gotten better at pushing my teams on this topic. I’ve seen programs that initially look like they are thriving but focus on activity numbers (i.e., community activity and growth) that cause significant drift over time. Some programs have had to be paused to realign resources with immediate business needs, relaunching the program 1-2 years with a tighter mission. Painful when it needs to happen, the pause and relaunch makes a big difference for the company, the product, and the community members participating in the program.

Value-Led Success Measures

Your success measures should focus on the value you bring to your organization – not just your activity numbers. They should be easy to understand, and they should lead with the value you are creating.

Reminder and Disclaimer – DevRel is more than numbers; Be creative
This blog post reflects my bias towards quantitative key results. Don’t feel bound by this approach and feel free to explore the value you drive – whether monthly success stories, regular Product feedback/reviews, or monthly community insights back to the company. The OKRs listed here are provided to insire, not to constrain.

I find the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) approach to be the most effective framework, as it provides a clear formula to crystallize how I will talk about success with both leadership and team members. And I’ve found OKRs to be easy to translate into other company approaches (KPIs, scorecards, VMTs, etc.).

If you’re new to OKRs, check out the What is an OKR? Definition and Examples for an introduction to what they are and how they can help. To dig in deep on the topic, I highly recommend John Doerr’s “Measure What Matters” for a comprehensive overview of using OKRs, and I’ve heard good things about Christina Wodtke’s “Radical Focus” for a more practical, story-driven approach.

Every OKR follows this simple formula:

I/we will (Objective), as measured by (Key Results)

Within my teams, I use up to three objectives: one primary objective that can also serve as the team’s elevator pitch, and one or two supporting objectives that clarify or segment the work that the team does.

Four Principles for Value-Led DevRel OKRs

Through years of experimentation, I’ve found these four principles crucial for creating DevRel success measures that lead with business value:

1. Give voice to your primary objective or top priority

Your first OKR should express seek to accomplish three things:

It expresses the team’s purpose and frames the business value we are creating
It cleanly ladders up to a business outcome that your internal stakeholders care about
It’s scoped so that each team member can see their contribution reflected within it

Meh objective: “Create great developer content”
Better objective: “Educate developers to help them be successful”
Solid objective: “Make [our] platform the preferred choice for AI developers in [our] industry”

The first example leads with an activity; the second connects to business value but lacks specificity of the team’s objective; the third both connects to business value with a clear audience focus and sets an outcome team members can rally around.

2. Make your objectives as durable as your mission

All of your objectives should have an outcome that balances aspiration with achievability:

For your primary objective (OKR 1), set an objective that is durable and can carry across fiscal year boundaries. This should speak to the larger strategy that you or the team are driving and create consistency for the team and for your stakeholders.
For your supporting objectives (OKR 2 and 3), use SMART guidelines (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound) to outline the time-bound priorities that can drive focus and energy. If you have multiple teams or priorities, you can use your supporting OKRs to shine the spotlight on them.

And as a quality check – verify that you will use these to validate that the work is on the right path. If you can’t use your OKRs to prioritize work or validate if you’re on the right path, double-check if you picked the right one.

Meh Example: “Publish the [new SDK] documentation in October”
Better Example: “Successfully launch the [new SDK] content with in Q4 to our developers”
Solid example: “Successfully launch the [new SDK] in Q4 for both developers and internal stakeholders”

The first example is a one-off project; the second provides a larger outcome (launch) and a timeframe that can span multiple months or quarters; the third adds scope that communicates DevRel’s impact outside the company (where they may lead with content creation) and inside the company (where they may support Product with feedback and Marketing with launch support).

3. Prioritize key results that you can own and drive

For each objective, you should set between 2-5 key results (‘KRs’). Using no more than 3 KRs to help keep them memorable for the team and your stakeholders.

Select KRs that you have agency over and avoid using measures used by another team. If you are using someone else’s key results to measure your success, you run three risks:

If you can’t control the key results, you will be unable to correct KRs that trend negatively
You may end up competing with other teams for resources/budget or results.
“Why do we need DevRel when Demand Gen drives more trial sign-ups?”
Ownership may become murky and hard to define who owns work
“Why can’t DevRel create the blog post series for the new partnership with <framework x>?”

Building upon “Make our platform the preferred choice for AI developers” above, let’s add some example key results (KRs):

Meh example: “Company achieves 25% revenue growth from developer-led accounts”
Better example: “Improve our trial-to-active conversion rate from 15% to 25%”
Solid example: “Grow annual active developers using our MCP content (APIs/docs/quickstarts) by 25% YoY while maintaining a 90% satisfaction rating”

The first example is a key result that you contribute to, but not one that you likely control; the second gives you more ownership but lacks completeness; the third balances scoped growth with quality, both of which your team can directly influence and control.

It’s also worth noting that the ‘solid example’ also uses a concept of a paired key result (‘paired KR’), which combines a quantitative KR (API usage) to measure growth and a qualitative KR (satisfaction rating) to qualify whether it’s the right kind of growth. I like using these for KRs that track growth (e.g., ‘grow <x> newsletter subscribers with an open rate above <y>%’) to help prevent your KR from driving growth with the wrong behavior.

4. Ensure that achieved results genuinely indicate success

Lastly, apply a recursive check on your OKRs – once all KRs are satisfied/achieved, the objective should truly be met. Along with paired KRs, this OKR check is what makes the OKR approach so powerful for me. Adopting this principle into your OKRs should help both at design time (picking the right KRs) and at runtime (prevents the goalposts from moving or the work to drive from the objective).

Meh example:
Objective: Grow developer adoption
KRs: Publish 12 blog posts, attend 6 conferences, create 3 videos

Better example:
Objective: Grow developer adoption
KRs: Increase MAUs by 20%, improve developer NPS from 30 to 50, reduce time-to-hello-world by 30%

Solid example:
Objective: Grow developer adoption of our platform
KRs: Increase MAUs by 20% quarter-over-quarter, improve developer NPS from 30 to 50, grow active project count in GitHub by 25%, reduce time-to-hello-world by 30%

For the first example, you could hit all the key results without actually growing adoption. The second ties to outcomes but could miss important dimensions. The third ensures comprehensive coverage of quantity, quality, and efficiency metrics that, if achieved, would truly indicate success.

Aligning OKRs with your context

As additional food for thought, below are some additional inputs that you can use when crafting your DevRel success measures.

Developer journey – think about where your team has the most impact in the developer’s journey with your company. I’ll dig into this more in my next blog post, but a couple examples:
- Awareness – site visits, social engagement, event attendance, newsletter signups
- Engagement – active users, API calls, churn reduction
Developer personas – tailor your OKRs to the developer personas you target, for example:
- “Perry the Pioneer” – your metrics can emphasize adoption or innovation and cutting-edge
- “Gale the Guardian” – your metrics emphasize scale and growth within your customers

Okay – let’s OKR!

If you haven’t yet defined your success measures, below is an actionable collection of steps to get you started. I encourage you to explore OKRs and use the four principles we’ve discussed to express your team’s unique value to your company. Even a simple first draft can spark valuable conversations with your manager/leadership about what truly matters for your organization.

Start with your mission – What is your team’s fundamental purpose?
Identify key stakeholders – Who benefits from your work, and what do they value?
Draft objectives – Begin with 1-3 objectives that express your core purpose
Define key results – Identify 3-5 measurable results for each objective
Test with stakeholders – Ensure your OKRs resonate with leadership and team members
Implement tracking – Set up simple systems to track progress
Review regularly – Check and adjust quarterly while keeping objectives relatively stable

To help you get started, I recommend this DevRel OKR Worksheet Template from Atlassian (general OKR template that can be adapted for DevRel).

For additional inspiration on DevRel success measures, there are a number of sites, articles, and books out there. A few articles to start – DefRel KPIs, KPIs for DevRel Teams, DevRel.Agency’s post on DevRel Metrics that Matter, and SlashData’s Dev Marketing KPIs are different than DevRel KPIs.

Remember, the goal of OKRs is not to turn DevRel into a purely metrics-driven machine. It’s to ensure that your passion for serving developers translates into sustainable business value that leadership can recognize and support. And it’s also to help ensure that you (and your team) stay focused on your true objectives.

What’s Next?

In the next post in this series, we’ll explore Lesson 2: “Embrace and Define DevRel’s Unique Position” – how to reflect your specific organizational context in your metrics.

Have you implemented OKRs in your DevRel organization? What objectives and key results have worked well for you? Share your experiences in the comments below or connect with me on LinkedIn.