Product Managers are storytellers: they tell stories about their view of the future, and how they intend to take you there. But, as any good storyteller, we know that the same story will not work for everyone: the management team needs to understand how will you help driving the business strategy, the development team wants to see how the different parts come together and what dependencies they have, your customers want to know when the product with that feature can be purchased. So you create different stories, and pick the one best suited to the audience in front of you. Except, they are not different stories: it is essentially the same, where you decide to use maybe a different language, or a different level of details. How do you keep them all together, to avoid providing inconsistent messages? I find that there is an uncanny similarity between this challenge and the concept of hierarchical OKR. In this talks we will explore possible ways to use OKR as a glue to hold all your stories together.

Franco Gatti is a senior product manager with almost 20 years of experience with ABB in several technical and management positions. He is currently engaged in a Product Management Excellence Journey to enhance the professional level of ABB large product management community. The journey develops around the key levers of organizational and individual development, optimal processes and efficient tools.He holds a master degree in Applied Physics from the Milan State University in Italy, specialized in System Theory and Automation. Before moving to the Product Management profession, Franco spent 14 years as a Software Development Manager in the Automation business of ABB, and prior to that 5 years as a software developer for business applications.Franco is based at the ABB Country Headquarters in Italy, and can be reached at franco.gatti@it.abb.com.