OKR vs Roadmap: They're Not Competing (Here's How They Connect)

“Should we use OKRs or a roadmap?”

I hear this question constantly—from founders, from product leaders, from boards asking why there seems to be two different planning systems running in parallel. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding that’s costing teams strategic clarity.

OKRs and roadmaps aren’t either/or. They’re both/and.

The question isn’t which one to use. It’s how to connect them properly—which almost nobody does.

The False Dichotomy

Let me be direct: anyone asking “OKR vs roadmap?” has been given bad advice somewhere along the line.

It’s like asking “budget vs project plan?” or “strategy vs execution?” These aren’t alternatives—they operate at different levels of the planning hierarchy.

Here’s the relationship:

OKRs without a roadmap are wishes. Roadmaps without OKRs are activity. You need both.

Why the Confusion Exists

The confusion typically comes from three sources:

1. Feature-Based Roadmaps

If your roadmap is a list of features with dates, it does compete with OKRs—because it’s describing different things.

A feature roadmap says: “Build recommendation engine in Q2.” An OKR says: “Increase average order value by 20%.”

These might connect, or they might not. Often teams don’t bother checking.

The solution isn’t to choose between them. It’s to make your roadmap outcome-based so it speaks the same language as your OKRs.

2. OKRs Set at Wrong Altitude

Company-level OKRs like “Become the market leader” are too high-altitude to guide product work. Team-level OKRs like “Ship the new checkout” are too low-altitude to be strategic.

When OKRs are set at the wrong level, they either don’t connect to roadmap work at all (too strategic) or they’re just the roadmap restated in OKR format (too tactical).

3. Different Ownership, No Integration

In many companies, leadership sets OKRs and product teams build roadmaps, with minimal conversation between them.

The result: two planning artifacts that look strategically aligned on slides but are operationally disconnected in practice.

How OKRs and Roadmaps Should Connect

Here’s the model that actually works:

Company Strategy
      ↓
Annual Company Objectives
      ↓
Roadmap (Objectives allocated to squads/sprints)
      ↓
Teams Figure out Key Rsults
      ↓
Delivery (Stories, tasks, work)

Each level informs the next. Strategy shapes company OKRs. Company OKRs shape team OKRs. Team OKRs become roadmap Objectives. Roadmap Objectives drive daily work.

The roadmap is the BRIDGE between OKRs and delivery.

This is exactly how RoadmapOne works. Your roadmap Objectives ARE your team OKRs—not a separate artifact. The roadmap shows which squad is pursuing each Objective and when.

Connect your OKRs to your roadmap—sign up free

The Integration Pattern

Let me walk through what healthy integration looks like at each stage.

Stage 1: Company OKRs → Team OKRs

Company-level OKRs should be ambitious business outcomes:

• “Achieve £10M ARR”
• “Reduce churn to <5% annually”
• “Expand into 3 new European markets”

These decompose into team-level OKRs that multiple squads can pursue:

• “Increase trial-to-paid conversion to 25%” (Growth Squad)
• “Improve customer health score to 85” (Retention Squad)
• “Launch localised product in Germany” (Expansion Squad)

Stage 2: Team OKRs → Roadmap Objectives

Each team OKR becomes an Objective on your roadmap. Not a feature—an outcome. The process of translating Objectives into measurable Key Results is where teams take ownership of how they’ll achieve outcomes.

The roadmap shows:

• Who owns each Objective (which squad)
• When they’re working on it (which sprints/quarters)
• What Key Results indicate progress
• How it connects to company OKRs

This is where most teams fail. They have perfectly good OKRs in one document and a completely disconnected feature roadmap in another.

Stage 3: Roadmap → Delivery

With Objectives on the roadmap, teams have clarity on what outcomes they’re pursuing. They use product discovery to determine HOW to achieve those outcomes—what features, experiments, or changes might work.

The roadmap doesn’t prescribe solutions. It prescribes outcomes. Teams own the solutions.

What Breaks the Connection

In my experience, OKR-to-roadmap integration fails for predictable reasons:

1. OKRs Get Set and Forgotten

Leadership invests heavily in quarterly OKR planning, then returns to managing via the roadmap. By week 3, the OKRs are abandoned and the roadmap runs the show.

Fix: Make your roadmap Objectives your OKRs. Don’t have two separate systems.

2. Roadmap Items Aren’t Outcomes

If your roadmap contains “Build feature X” instead of “Achieve outcome Y,” there’s no way to connect it to OKRs. Features don’t roll up to objectives—outcomes do.

Fix: Shift to outcome-based roadmaps .

3. No Capacity Connection

OKRs imply work. Work requires capacity. But many teams set OKRs without checking whether they have the capacity to pursue them.

The result: too many OKRs chasing too little capacity, with inevitable failure.

Fix: Use the roadmap to allocate capacity to OKRs explicitly. If you can’t fit an OKR on the roadmap, you can’t achieve it—so don’t commit to it.

4. Different Time Horizons

OKRs are typically quarterly. Roadmaps often show 6-12 months. If these aren’t aligned, the roadmap extends beyond current OKRs into vague future commitments.

Fix: Treat anything beyond the current OKR period as lower-confidence and subject to change. Use Now Next Later thinking for the extended view.

The OKR-Roadmap Alignment Checklist

Before finalising your quarterly roadmap, check:

• Every company OKR has at least one roadmap Objective pursuing it
• Every roadmap Objective connects to at least one company OKR
• No OKRs are orphaned (committed but not resourced)
• No roadmap items are orphaned (resourced but not connected to OKRs)
• Capacity allocation matches OKR priority

If any check fails, you have misalignment that will surface as confusion later.

Practical Example: Connecting OKRs to Roadmap

Company OKR: Achieve 30% revenue growth (£15M → £19.5M)

How it decomposes:

The roadmap shows:

• Which outcomes contribute to company goals
• Who is responsible for each
• When they’re being pursued
• How capacity is allocated

This IS the integration. The roadmap doesn’t exist separately from OKRs—it IS the expression of how OKRs will be achieved.

The Dual-Track Reality

What actually gets built comes from product discovery—experiments, prototypes, user research that identify solutions to outcomes.

So the full picture is:

OKRs (Outcomes to achieve)
      ↓
Roadmap (When/who will pursue them)
      ↓
Discovery (What might work)
      ↓
Delivery (What we're building)

The roadmap sits between strategy (OKRs) and execution (delivery). It’s the allocation layer.

For more on balancing discovery and delivery, see our guide on allocating discovery capacity .

When People Say “We Use OKRs Instead of Roadmaps”

This usually means one of two things:

Best case: They have an outcome-based roadmap that they call their “OKRs.”

That’s fine—it’s just naming. If their “OKRs” show who’s working on what and when, they have a roadmap. They’re just not calling it that.

Worst case: They have quarterly OKRs but no visibility into capacity allocation.

This is dangerous. Without a roadmap showing resource allocation, you can’t answer:

• Is anyone actually working on this OKR?
• Do we have capacity for all our committed OKRs?
• Which squad should prioritise which outcome?

OKRs alone can’t answer these questions. You need the roadmap layer.

See how RoadmapOne connects OKRs to squads and sprints—free sign-up

When People Say “We Use Roadmaps Instead of OKRs”

This usually means they have a feature-based roadmap with no outcome connection.

The roadmap shows what they’re building and when. But it doesn’t show:

• What business result each feature is supposed to achieve
• How success will be measured
• Whether the overall portfolio is strategically aligned

You can run a company this way, but you’re flying blind. You know you’re busy, but you don’t know if you’re effective.

The OKR Ceremony Problem

Many teams complain that OKRs add overhead without value. They’re not wrong—if OKRs exist as a separate ceremony disconnected from how work actually gets planned.

The solution isn’t to abandon OKRs. It’s to embed them in the roadmap.

When your roadmap Objectives ARE your OKRs, you don’t need:

• Separate OKR documents
• Separate OKR reviews
• Reconciliation between OKRs and roadmap

You need one artifact that does both jobs: an outcome-based roadmap.

Common Questions Answered

“Should OKRs drive the roadmap, or should the roadmap reflect OKRs?”

Neither—they should be the same thing. Your team OKRs should be your roadmap Objectives.

“We have company OKRs but struggle to connect them to team roadmaps.”

Decompose company OKRs into team-level outcomes. Each team outcome becomes a roadmap Objective. The roadmap shows allocation of that Objective to squads and time periods.

“Our roadmap is features, not outcomes. How do we migrate?”

Start by asking “why?” for each feature. “Why are we building recommendations?” becomes “To increase average order value.” Make that outcome the roadmap item, with the feature as a potential solution.

For a detailed guide, see OKRs for Product Teams .

“Who should own the connection between OKRs and roadmap?”

Product leadership—whoever owns the roadmap should ensure it reflects OKRs. If different people own OKRs and roadmap, you have a structural problem.

“How do we handle OKRs that span multiple teams?”

Create separate roadmap Objectives for each team’s contribution, all tagged to the same company OKR. The roadmap shows how different squads contribute to shared outcomes.

The Integrated View

Here’s what good looks like:

Company OKR: “Reduce customer churn to <5% annually”

Team OKR / Roadmap Objective: “Improve customer health score from 70 to 85”

On the Roadmap:

• Owner: Retention Squad
• Timing: Q1-Q2
• Key Results: Health score, NPS, support tickets
• Tags : Retention strategy, GROW category

In Discovery:

• User research on churn reasons
• Analysis of health score drivers
• Prototype of proactive outreach system

In Delivery:

• Whatever solutions discovery validates

The roadmap IS the OKR execution plan. Not a separate document.

Building the Connection in RoadmapOne

RoadmapOne was designed specifically for this integration:

1. Objectives are your team OKRs—measurable outcomes
2. Key Results define what success looks like
3. Squads show who owns each Objective
4. Sprints show when they’re pursuing it
5. Tags connect Objectives to company strategy

You can tag Objectives by company OKR, seeing immediately which company goals have roadmap coverage and which are orphaned.

The grid view shows capacity allocation at a glance—which squads are working on which outcomes, and whether you’re over-committed or under-utilised.

Conclusion

The “OKR vs Roadmap” debate is a false dichotomy born from poor integration.

OKRs define outcomes. Roadmaps allocate capacity to pursue them. You need both—and they need to be connected.

The cleanest solution: make them the same thing. Your roadmap Objectives ARE your team OKRs. No separate documents, no separate ceremonies, no reconciliation headaches.

When someone asks “OKR vs Roadmap?"—the answer is “yes, both, integrated.”