Projects vs OKRs: What Belongs Where
One of the most common questions from teams new to OKRs is simple: does this go in our OKRs, or is it just a project? Get this wrong and your OKR list turns into a giant task list with fancy formatting. Get it right and OKRs stay focused on what actually matters.
The Core Difference
A project is work you plan to complete. An OKR is an outcome you want to achieve. A project has a defined scope and an end date. An OKR describes a change in the world, usually measured by a number moving in a direction you care about. As Harvard Business Review puts it, the difference between outputs and outcomes is more than semantics: outputs are what you produce, outcomes are the difference that output makes. Launching a new website is a project. Increasing signups from that website is an outcome that could be a Key Result.
This distinction matters because OKRs are meant to create focus around outcomes, not to track every piece of work happening in the organization. If you put every project on your OKR list, you lose the ability to tell which ones actually move the needle.
A Simple Test
Ask yourself: if we finish this, but the number we care about doesn't move, did we succeed? If the answer is yes, you're looking at a project, not an OKR. Shipping a new onboarding flow is a success even if it doesn't move activation rates, from a pure "did we do the work" perspective. But that's exactly the trap. The point of an OKR is to hold you accountable to the outcome, not just the output.
A useful follow-up question: could we complete this task and still fail the organization? If yes, it's a task or project, and it belongs on a roadmap or a to-do list, not framed as a Key Result. Read more about the structure of good Key Results in our post on making Key Results measurable.
Where Projects Still Fit
This doesn't mean projects and OKRs are unrelated. Projects are often the initiatives that support a Key Result. If your Key Result is "increase trial-to-paid conversion from 12% to 18%," your projects might include redesigning the pricing page, adding a guided demo, or running a discount test. The projects are the how. The Key Result is the what and the why. Keeping this hierarchy clear prevents the common mistake we cover in why activities are not Key Results.
In Easy OKR, we deliberately keep this separation lightweight. You link initiatives or projects underneath a Key Result so everyone can see what work is driving the outcome, without turning the OKR board itself into a project management tool.
Watch for Busywork Disguised as Outcomes
Some teams try to dress up a project as an OKR to make it sound more important, or because leadership expects everyone to "have OKRs." This produces Key Results like "launch the new CRM" or "complete security audit." These are real and often important pieces of work. But they aren't outcomes. Richard Rumelt calls this kind of vague, activity-based goal a "blue-sky objective" in Good Strategy Bad Strategy: it lists desirable outcomes without the underlying logic of how you'll get there. A better approach is to ask what result the CRM launch or the security audit is meant to produce, and measure that instead.
If a project truly has no measurable outcome attached to it, and it still needs to happen, it's fine to just track it as a project outside your OKRs. Not every important thing your organization does needs to live inside the OKR framework. Forcing it does more harm than good, since it dilutes the OKRs that actually deserve attention.
When a Project Deserves to Become an OKR
Occasionally a project is big enough, risky enough, or strategically important enough that leadership wants visibility into its progress every week. In that case, it can make sense to frame it as an Objective with Key Results that track meaningful milestones or outcomes along the way, rather than just "done" or "not done." The test is still the same: are you tracking an outcome, or just a checklist with a deadline attached?