OKRs: the new era of coordination begins at ALMA

Jun 12, 2024 | News | 0 comments

Tags: ALMA

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“The future is here”; “All eyes in the sky”; “Shaping a future of seamless innovation and unmatched efficiency”. These phrases are some of the goals to be achieved in the Objective, Key & Results (OKRs): the new working channel that defines the line of communication between the different groups at ALMA.
“It has been challenging, because it is a paradigm shift in how we do things, but it has been beneficial,” says Juan Cortés, our PMG Manager.

He explains how this new methodology was implemented at the beginning of this year, which requires the transparency of his team’s objectives and key results, giving “much more visibility to the initiatives and above all to their impact, not only in the science group, but also in other groups”.

The OKRs are accessible to everyone: by logging in to Confluence, just go to the JAO Operations Team page and then to Quarterly Priorities. There, the different management teams register the objectives they set for the quarter based on the organisation’s pillars. From there, different key expected results and related activities are derived. There is also a comment column to evaluate the achievement of that objective at the end of the quarter.

Its impact has been felt. Thanks to the constant measurement of its operations, Juan says that in the first quarter alone PMG has completed 80% of its objectives at a high level, and 56% at a group level, substantially improving the tracking of its key projects. “The OKRs have allowed us to better track the goals that we consider really important and inspiring for our group,” he adds.

Motivation is precisely a point on which José Parra, our APO Manager, agrees. “There are many things that are routine, and the people who work at the observatory sometimes forget over time how spectacular this place is, and the day-to-day life burns them out. For that, the OKRs serve as a good source of inspiration.”
The APO team connected pillars such as Sustainable Operations with objectives they already had, such as Laser Focus on Dataflow, and from there they have seen the changes: ‘We are on the right track, people are connected to what we are doing in a different way than before. The group is trying to really sharpen their work and go the extra mile. There is an interest in improving the pillar of excellence, and I see that on a day-to-day basis. So, we are OK with the OKRs, I’m a fan,” smiles José.
One of the keys to this methodology is that there should be as few objectives as possible and that these should be simple to understand, in order to familiarise the priorities among the different working groups.

According to Rolando Olivos, our IMG Manager, one of its great advantages is that “OKRs don’t tell you if you have to jump six times tomorrow. What it gives us is an instance in which I say ‘I, IMG, am going to jump’, and another group comes and says ‘ah, me too, so let’s jump together’. This is aligning yourself so that the priorities of your working group come closer to those of the others”.

At ALMA, there were already instances of short and long-term communication, says Rolando, but a middle ground was missing, and that is what the OKRs achieve: “For any organisation, coordination is always one of the roles that should be the most relevant. The more you invest in preparation, the better the results in execution.”
By the end of June, the different groups implementing OKRs should present their priorities for the third quarter of this year.
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