The Ultimate Coda Handbook for Planning & OKRs
What I learned about planning from 100s of teams and why they choose Coda.
Hi, I’m Oliver. I’ve been the Head of Engineering at Coda since 2021. Before that, I spent 14 years as a VP of Engineering at Google where I ran different teams like the YouTube Creator team and the Google Travel & Shopping teams. Along the way, I built a litany of products like Google Flights, Google Shopping Ads, YouTube Content ID, Gmail Frontend, and many more.
A common thread throughout my career has been planning and OKR management. Planning has always been a passion topic of mine. I first read Andy Grove’s High Output Management —a book that laid the foundation for the OKR framework—when I went to university in Germany. I was inspired to see the huge impact that simple planning and a focus on priorities could have. For the last 25 years, I’ve had the opportunity to lead planning at many different companies, from Pan-European R&D projects, to a variety of global engineering teams at Google, to Coda where I lead the company-wide planning process. At Coda, I’ve also been able to learn from and advise many companies on their planning processes.
As part of my journey in planning, I have seen many common issues and patterns of success. Perhaps the most important insight I’ve learned is that it is tremendously important to have a powerful but flexible tool to run your planning process. As I learned in my time at Google, limitations and inflexibility in tooling directly impact the quality of your plans and the resulting execution.
So I set out to create this handbook, documenting the most impactful planning insights I’ve learned and detailing why Coda is the perfect choice for running your planning process. The contents of this handbook should be helpful for anyone looking to optimize their existing planning process or to create a new one from scratch.
Three steps to build an efficient and effective planning process.
In my experience, there are three major steps to improving your planning, and I cover each in detail on the following pages:
- Define the planning output: How planning dimensions and output are the bedrock of effective and efficient planning.
- Optimize the process: How planning output is only as good as the process by which you create it.
- Integrate to drive execution: How to integrate planning into execution and hold the team accountable.
After reading through these steps, it should become quite evident that choosing the right tool is critical to a successful planning process. With that in mind, I’ll give you my detailed perspective on why Coda is perhaps the best tool you can choose for your planning process on the Why Coda for planning? page.
Of course, I will also give detailed guidance on How to get started. And for those ready to build a powerful, customized planning process in Coda, I’ve developed a separate tutorial walking you through every step. This tutorial is extremely comprehensive, offering hands-on guidance on how to build a full-scale planning process from scratch. To run OKRs for a larger team or company, I strongly recommend the tutorial.
Ready to jump in? Head to Define the planning output to get started.
FAQ
My team doesn’t know Coda yet, how do I get them up to speed?
Here’s a message you can send your team:
I have a ritual to contribute, where do I send it?
We’d love to hear from you! Contact the Coda team and mention you have a ritual you want to share. We’ll be in touch shortly.
I’d love help with this transformation, is that possible?
Absolutely! We’re happy to help you implement any of the rituals in this handbook. Request help and a Coda expert will be in touch.
Can my company use Coda for other departments besides engineering?
Yes! Coda has solutions for every team, including design, product, sales & success, marketing, HR, and more. Check out coda.io/solutions to see ready-to-use solutions for every department.