Objectives, key results, milestones

Execution → OKR is where objectives, key results and milestones live. The three sit in a hierarchy, each answering a different question. An objective is the qualitative destination — what you're trying to achieve, in plain language, with no number attached. A key result is how you'll know you got there — a measurable target with a start and an end. A milestone is a marker along the way to one key result — a checkpoint you either hit or didn't, with no ongoing measurement of its own.

The test for which one you're writing: if it needs a number and a deadline to mean anything, it's a key result. If it's the reason the key result matters, it's the objective. If it's a single yes/no event on the way to the key result, it's a milestone.

To create an objective, use Add new objective on the OKR Overview page. To add a key result underneath it, open that objective and use Add Key Result — this opens a dialog for its Name, Responsible, a Type toggle (KPI or Custom), Status, and, if Type is KPI, the KPI itself plus Start, Target, Actual and the Link progress to KPI checkbox (9.2 covers exactly what that checkbox does). A milestone lives inside its key result as a plain checkbox — a description and a tick, nothing more — with a + Add milestone control underneath the last one to add another.

The person accountable for a key result is called Responsible — a field on the key result itself, set independently of who owns the objective above it. An objective's own card shows an Owner in the overview, but that's a separate role: the Owner is accountable for the objective as a whole, and the Responsible person on a given key result underneath it can be anyone — often someone else entirely, whoever's actually doing that piece of the work. Neither the objective nor the milestone requires this to be the same person who created it.