OKRs serve to help set strategy for the company at Google – they are the handful of goals the company is trying to accomplish. To that end, some teams find that they are best revisited a few times a quarter. In this manner, they can serve as a calibration tool, giving everyone an opportunity to adjust to new information, abandon objectives that are clearly not going to happen, and increasing attention on borderline objectives that will benefit from additional resources. Here’s an example timeline of how a team could approach OKR setting:

How often a team checks-in will depend on their own seasonal needs, how good the communication within the team already is, and how well the team is doing at predicting outcomes based on their ability to execute.

Some teams at Google have found midpoint check-ins are helpful and can make sure everyone remains focused on the same goals. For some teams, an informal review of the quarter’s goals is enough, for others, a more formal approach may be in order.