qa-okr-author

Overview

The QA manager opens a blank document at quarter-start to draft OKRs. Generic OKR templates (Tability, Asana, ClickUp) all share the same flaw: they don't know what to measure for a QA team. "Improve quality" is not an Objective; "achieve 95% pass rate" is not a Key Result without a baseline and a documented method. This skill produces a draft anchored on the team's actual current-state data, with every numeric target citing the artifact it came from.

Per the canonical OKR framework (Doerr, Measure What Matters (opens in new window)), an Objective is a concrete, inspirational goal and each Key Result is measurable success criteria with "no opportunity for 'grey area'". The 0.7/1.0 grading rule is stated once here and referenced thereafter: this skill emits Committed KRs (target 1.0 grading, binary outcomes the team promises) and Aspirational KRs (target 0.7, stretch, where 70% is success). Consistently hitting 100% means the OKRs are not aspirational enough.

When to use

• Quarter-start: the team is committing to OKRs and needs a draft anchored on current data, not blank-page guesswork.
• Mid-quarter pivot: a strategic shift (new product line, regulatory deadline, incident-driven priority change) requires re-drafting OKRs against fresh baseline data.
• New manager onboarding: a manager taking over a team needs to read the team's quality posture and propose OKRs that bridge from current to target state.
• Pre-board / pre-leadership review: the manager needs to articulate quality goals to executives with cited evidence.

Do not use this skill when:

• The team has no measurable baseline data (no defect history, no test-run history, no risk matrix). Without measurable inputs, the KRs are aspirational fiction - escalate to upstream authoring skills first.
• The Objective is already locked by leadership and you only need the KRs - use the Committed KR shape directly.
• You want a generic company-wide OKR - that's Tability / Asana / ClickUp territory; this skill is QA-domain-specific.

Step 1 - Capture the inputs

Required:

The skill halts with MISSING_BASELINE (supply ≥1 current-state metric source) if no measurable input is offered.

Step 2 - Walk the QA-OKR shape catalog

The skill recognises five canonical QA Objective shapes (catalog, not prescription); the manager picks 1 - 3 and the skill drafts the measurable KR family under each:

1. Strengthen the test pyramid - layer ratio, cycle time, E2E budget.
2. Reduce escape-defect rate - escape volume, time-to-detect, category-specific.
3. Cut regression cycle time - wall-clock, parallelisation, CI cost.
4. Reduce flake-budget consumption - quarantine ceiling, flake rate, repair velocity.
5. Close compliance evidence gaps - per-control coverage, evidence freshness, audit pass-rate.

The full catalog - each shape's KR-axis table, example KRs, and baseline source - is in references/okr-shape-catalog.md. Shape 2 is realized end to end in Step 3.

Step 3 - Draft committed vs aspirational Key Results

Each KR is flagged Committed or Aspirational per the grading rule stated in the Overview (target 1.0 vs 0.7):

## Objective 2 - Reduce escape-defect rate

**Quarter:** 2026-Q3 (Jul-Sep)
**Rationale:** Current quarterly P1 escape rate is 4 (per the defect-trend 2026-Q2 report - citing `tracker-export-2026-Q2.json` lines `filter(severity=P1, found_in=production)`). Industry context: PractiTest 2026 finds 19.9% of teams use AI for risk identification - the team is below this. Reducing escape rate is the team's primary tied-to-revenue quality metric.

### Key Results

| # | Type | KR | Baseline | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KR2.1 | **Committed** | P1 escapes reach ≤ 2/quarter | 4/quarter (2026-Q2) | the defect-trend report |
| KR2.2 | **Committed** | P2 escapes reach ≤ 8/quarter | 13/quarter (2026-Q2) | the defect-trend report |
| KR2.3 | **Aspirational** | MTTD on P1 reaches ≤ 4h (median) | 11h (2026-Q2) | `mttr-mtbf-tracker` |
| KR2.4 | **Aspirational** | Regression-class escapes reach -50% vs Q2 | 18 → 9 | the defect-clustering export + the defect-trend report |

### Scoring (per Doerr / Grove canon)

- Committed KRs (2.1, 2.2): grading target 1.0 - anything <1.0 is a miss.
- Aspirational KRs (2.3, 2.4): grading target 0.7 - 70% achievement is success.

### Risk if all KRs are committed

The team avoids risk by setting only committed KRs at safe levels. Per Doerr: "Consistently meeting 100% indicates OKRs need re-evaluation." Mix at least one aspirational KR per Objective.

Step 4 - Cite every numeric target

The skill refuses to emit a KR target without citing the baseline. The output's audit appendix is the load-bearing artifact that lets the team verify the draft is grounded:

### Audit (sources for every numeric target)

| KR | Target | Baseline | Source artifact / query |
|---|---|---|---|
| KR1.1 | unit:integration:E2E = 70:20:10 | 41:14:45 | `test-pyramid-balancer` 2026-Q2 output |
| KR1.2 | regression duration < 45 min/shard | 67 min/shard | `test-run-summary-author cross-run-trend` 2026-Q2 |
| KR2.1 | P1 escapes ≤ 2/quarter | 4/quarter | the defect-trend report filter(severity=P1, found_in=production, window=2026-Q2) |
| KR2.3 | MTTD P1 ≤ 4h median | 11h median | `mttr-mtbf-tracker` per-incident log, 2026-Q2 |
| KR3.1 | flake rate < 3% of runs | 8% | the flake-detection weekly export 2026-Q2 |
| KR3.2 | quarantine list ≤ 5 | 11 | `flaky-test-quarantine` snapshot 2026-06-30 |

If a baseline is not retrievable, the KR is flagged [BASELINE_NEEDED] in the draft and excluded from the committed set until the team supplies the data.

Step 5 - Cross-check against organisational alignment

OKRs are not authored in isolation. The skill emits an alignment check section the manager fills before committing:

### Alignment check

| Layer | OKR or theme | This QA OKR set's contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Company quarterly theme | "Reduce mean revenue-affecting incident cost" | Objective 2 (escape rate) directly contributes |
| Engineering OKR | "Cut release cycle to weekly" | Objective 3 (regression cycle time) directly contributes |
| Product OKR | "Ship Feature X with high-stakes user impact" | Objective 2 ties to risk-prevention; Objective 5 ties to compliance review |
| SRE OKR | "Maintain 99.9% SLO" | Objective 2 (escape rate) and Objective 4 (flake budget) tie via `error-budget-tests` |

Per Doerr, OKRs at the team level should "ladder up" to company OKRs. The skill makes the laddering explicit so the team can validate alignment in stakeholder review.

Step 6 - Hand off to retro / quarterly review

The OKR set is the start of the loop, not the end. Hand-offs at quarter-end:

• Quarterly OKR retro: did we hit the KRs? Aspirational KRs at 0.7+ are wins; committed KRs at <1.0 are misses requiring action.
• Drift analysis: if multiple quarters show the same Objective without progress, the Objective is wrong (too vague, too ambitious, or not under the team's control).
• Source-artifact regeneration: the same baseline sources (the defect-trend report, test-run-summary-author, etc.) emit the end-of-quarter metrics; the comparison is mechanical.

Worked example

A full quarter-start draft for a 6-engineer QA team - two Objectives (escape-defect rate, regression cycle time) with committed/aspirational KRs, an alignment check, and a per-target audit table - is in references/worked-example.md.

Anti-patterns

Limitations

• Baseline data must exist. A team with no defect tracker, no CI history, no risk matrix has no anchor for KRs. The skill halts; the team supplies the data via upstream authoring skills.
• Domain-knowledge ceiling. The skill knows QA metrics; it does not know the business (revenue, customer impact). The manager must supply the "why" rationale for each Objective.
• Aspirational vs committed mix is opinion. Doerr recommends a mix; the team's culture determines the right ratio. The skill emits both flavors; the manager picks.
• Quarterly cadence assumed. Other cadences (semi-annual, monthly) work mechanically; the skill defaults to quarterly per the canonical framework.
• No automatic grading. End-of-quarter grading is a separate workflow (deferred to a future qa-okr-retro-reviewer agent). This skill only authors; grading happens at retro time.
• No org-tier OKR alignment automation. The Step 5 alignment check is manual; the skill does not pull company-tier OKRs from a separate system.

Hand-off targets

• Author the strategy doc the OKRs sit inside → test-strategy-author.
• Generate the cross-run trend for Shape 3 → test-run-summary-author (cross-run-trend output shape).
• Audit the pyramid baseline for Shape 1 → test-pyramid-balancer.
• Quarterly OKR retro / drift review → deferred (candidate qa-okr-retro-reviewer agent, Phase 7+).

References

• Measure What Matters (John Doerr, 2018) - canonical modern OKR reference; covers committed vs aspirational, 0.7 sweet spot, 1 - 3 objectives per cadence. Origin: Andy Grove at Intel in the 1970s, documented in High Output Management (1983), introduced to Google by Doerr in 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectives_and_key_results
• ISTQB glossary - test management (the discipline OKRs sit under): https://glossary.istqb.org/en_US/term/test-management
• ISTQB glossary - S.M.A.R.T. goal methodology (specific / measurable / attainable / relevant / timely - the framing each KR must satisfy): https://glossary.istqb.org/en_US/term/smart-goal-methodology
• ISTQB glossary - defect density (canonical metric for Shape 2 KRs): https://glossary.istqb.org/en_US/term/defect-density
• ISTQB glossary - escaped defect: https://glossary.istqb.org/en_US/term/escaped-defect
• Google Testing Blog, "Flaky Tests at Google and How We Mitigate Them" - flake-prevalence baseline for Shape 4 KRs (about 16% of tests show some flakiness): https://testing.googleblog.com/2016/05/flaky-tests-at-google-and-how-we.html
• PractiTest 2026 State of Testing Report - manager-tier survey; 19.9% of teams use AI for risk identification (cited in Shape 2 rationale): https://www.practitest.com/state-of-testing/
• test-strategy-author, risk-matrix, test-pyramid-balancer, e2e-suite-budget - sibling skills in the same plugin that feed inputs.
• test-run-summary-author, mttr-mtbf-tracker - cross-plugin baseline-source skills.