How OKR Transformed Vivo Internet Platform Product R&D Team: A Case Study

In recent years, OKR (Objectives and Key Results) has spread across many Chinese companies, and the Vivo Internet Platform product R&D team shares its understanding of OKR and the changes it brought after adoption.

Why OKR? The team, founded in 2015 and now comprising three backend development groups (platform, marketing, and innovation) with about 200 members, faced growing pains such as misaligned goals, resource conflicts, unclear roadmaps, idle manpower, superficial learning, and questionable performance assessments.

Recognizing that traditional KPI‑based performance management no longer suited R&D roles, the team explored new management methods and, in summer 2019, began learning and adopting OKR tools.

Changes after OKR adoption:

1. Focus on the most important team goals – Objectives are set collaboratively, with each key result assigned an owner, fostering ownership and motivation.

2. Value‑driven challenges – Goals are limited in number and evaluated for business, product, and organizational value, simplifying prioritization and aligning performance evaluation with value creation.

3. Efficient collaboration – The team built the “HuoLi” platform to manage a talent pool, recruit, and claim tasks, improving resource coordination and encouraging cross‑team cooperation.

4. Strong learning atmosphere – Regular knowledge‑sharing sessions, book clubs, and technical salons were organized, with OKR tracking ensuring continuous participation and improvement.

5. Continuous internal innovation – OKR‑driven incentives encouraged experimentation, with clear metrics for assessing innovation value and effort, leading to the incubation of multiple components and services.

6. Employee productivity boost – Autonomous goal setting increased commitment, exemplified by the overseas mall project that delivered a reusable global solution within seven days, dramatically improving efficiency.

Overall, the OKR framework helped the team build a self‑organizing, high‑performance benchmark team, fostering a virtuous cycle of goal alignment, collaboration, learning, and innovation.