Mid-Quarter OKR Health Check Analysis
Runs a mid-quarter OKR health check, scoring progress, identifying at-risk KRs, and recommending actions. Built for PMs running month-7 or week-6 OKR reviews.
When to use this prompt
Use this at the mid-point of your quarter to diagnose OKR health before it is too late to course-correct. You will need current progress data for each KR, the committed targets, and the time elapsed as a percentage of the quarter. The prompt scores each KR as green, yellow, or red and recommends specific actions. It is deliberately opinionated about what to do when KRs are off track: the default is not 'monitor closely' (a euphemism for doing nothing) but concrete actions like scope cuts or re-targeting. Use it as input to a team OKR review meeting.
The Prompt
You are a product operations lead running a mid-quarter OKR health check. Use a traffic-light scoring system (green, yellow, red) based on progress versus time elapsed, and recommend specific actions for at-risk KRs. OKRs and current progress: {{okr_progress}} Percent of quarter elapsed: {{percent_elapsed}} Quarter-end date: {{quarter_end}} Team capacity changes since quarter start: {{capacity_changes}} For each KR, produce: 1. PROGRESS â Current value, target value, percent of target achieved. 2. SCORE â GREEN (progress is ahead of or matches time elapsed), YELLOW (progress is 50-90 percent of expected pace), RED (progress is under 50 percent of expected pace). 3. LIKELY OUTCOME â Extrapolate current progress linearly to quarter end. Will we hit the target? 4. ROOT CAUSE â For YELLOW or RED KRs, the most likely reason for the gap. Be specific. 5. RECOMMENDED ACTION â One of: STAY THE COURSE (green), ACCELERATE (yellow with recoverable path), RE-TARGET (red with fundamentally wrong target), SCOPE CUT (red because dependencies are broken), or ESCALATE (red because external blocker needs executive unblock). After the per-KR analysis, produce: OVERALL QUARTER HEALTH â Summary count of green/yellow/red KRs plus a 1-sentence narrative. TOP 3 ACTIONS â The 3 most impactful things the team should do in the next 2 weeks to improve OKR health. These should be specific and owned. KRS TO LET GO â If any KRs are so far off that they cannot realistically recover, recommend letting them go to free up team focus. Letting go is a legitimate action; pretending a dead KR is alive wastes team capacity. Be honest. A yellow KR with a polite note is worse than a red KR with a specific action plan. Do not soften scores to preserve team morale; the team cannot course-correct what it will not name.
Example Output
KR 1: Reduce median days-to-collection from 18 to 12. Current: 15. Score: YELLOW. We are at 50 percent improvement but 60 percent of quarter is gone. Linear extrapolation suggests we land at 13, not 12. Root cause: Overdue sort launch delayed by 1 sprint due to timezone bug. Action: ACCELERATE by fast-tracking the reminder draft feature to compound impact. KR 2: Cut spreadsheet-exports from 1200/week to 400/week. Current: 950. Score: RED. Only 21 percent improvement at 60 percent quarter mark. Root cause: Admins are using the new sort but have not broken the spreadsheet habit. Action: RE-TARGET to 700/week, which is realistic given behavioral lag, plus add an in-app tour specifically explaining how the new sort replaces spreadsheet workflows. KR 3: NPS for billing admins from 32 to 50. Current: 38. Score: YELLOW. 33 percent improvement at 60 percent quarter mark. Root cause: NPS survey cadence is monthly; we have only 1 data point since launch. Action: STAY THE COURSE; trend is positive and data will catch up. OVERALL QUARTER HEALTH: 0 green, 2 yellow, 1 red. Narrative: on track to hit 2 of 3 KRs if we act on the red now. TOP 3 ACTIONS 1. Ship in-app tour for overdue sort by next Friday to break spreadsheet habit. Owner: Design + PM. 2. Re-target KR 2 in this week's team sync and communicate to leadership. Owner: PM. 3. Fast-track reminder draft to compound KR 1 improvement. Owner: EM. KRS TO LET GO: None yet, but KR 2 is close. If the tour does not move the number in 2 weeks, let it go and focus on KR 1 and 3.
Recommended Tools
Notion projects is the natural home for OKR tracking and weekly updates. Amplitude and Mixpanel supply the progress data needed to score KRs accurately. Use Notion for the OKR document and the analytics tool for the current value of each KR. Run the health check by pulling current values from analytics, running the prompt, and updating the Notion OKR doc with scores and actions.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I use this prompt?
Use it at the 50-60 percent mark of your quarter, which is the last point at which course corrections can still affect outcomes. Running it earlier produces noise because early progress is unpredictable; running it later is cathartic but too late to change anything. Also use it when a major external event (customer loss, priority shift, capacity change) mid-quarter suggests that the original targets may no longer be realistic. Do not use it weekly; the overhead exceeds the value at weekly cadence, and teams stop taking it seriously when it becomes a ritual.
Is it okay to let go of a KR mid-quarter?
Yes, and doing so honestly is usually better than pretending. A dead KR consumes team focus and erodes trust because everyone knows it will miss. The healthy pattern is to name the miss openly, explain the cause, choose to either re-target or let go, and communicate the decision to stakeholders within 48 hours of making it. Letting go is not failure; it is acknowledging that the world changed since commit and the team will produce more value by focusing elsewhere. Leadership respects teams that make explicit trade-off decisions far more than teams that silently miss commitments.