PO Workshop at Ananti

Setting Quarterly Goals and Strategies for the Product Org Over 8 Hours

At DelightRoom, our PO org holds a workshop at the end of every quarter. The structure of the workshop shifts depending on the key agenda, but the goal always remains exactly the same. It's about establishing the optimal quarterly goals. This quarter, we decided to take it offsite and headed down to Ananti Chord in Gapyeong. We wanted to dive deep into product discussions for a final sprint ahead of the year-end, and thanks to everyone's hard work in preparing for it, the workshop yielded fantastic results.

Let's take a look back at our short but impactful two-day journey.

A. Day 1 at 2:30 PM: Quarterly Review and Retrospective

Since it was right after the Chuseok holiday, everyone was frantic that morning catching up on their respective squad and team tasks.

Somehow, we all managed to gather at Ananti Chord around 2:30 PM and kicked off the workshop. We started by looking back at the past quarter where we had sprinted so hard. We reviewed the quarterly trends of our core product metrics and checked out each squad's OKR achievement rate. Because our PO org regularly tracks core metric trends and OKR progress every week, there weren't any major surprises; however, zooming out to a quarterly view allowed us to discuss the overall effectiveness of our past experiments and improvements.

Right after that, we moved on to our retrospective. We decided to have everyone pick a maximum of three things that went well and three things that fell short last quarter, which we then gathered and grouped by theme. Interestingly, the themes that were frequently mentioned as positives were also often brought up as areas for improvement—making us realize that these specific topics (strategy, planning) serve as the most crucial variables in achieving our outcomes. We wrapped up the retrospective by reviewing the organized points together and extracting actionable items for an even better next quarter.

B. Day 1 at 4:30 PM: Discussing High-Level Strategies

Next up was quarterly planning, but before diving in completely, we took some time for everyone to present high-level strategies they wanted to share. This acts as necessary background knowledge for understanding various detailed strategies, and also serves as a compass that points the direction for brainstorming new ones. I originally thought this would be a quick alignment session, but it sparked more questions than expected, and we ended up talking for a solid two hours. It was all thanks to everyone voluntarily preparing such high-quality material.

C. Day 1 at 6:30 PM: Lining Up Priorities

Following that, we synced up on the priority of each strategy to determine what approaches each objective-based org should take to achieve our Company OKRs. We’ve always done this priority line-up at every quarterly workshop. Everything seems important, but we need to rank them one by one to figure out what matters most so we can drive massive impact with a lean team. This time, as a special twist(?), we decided to calculate the revenue impact and DAU impact of each strategy beforehand. We usually relied on gut feelings to set priorities without these calculations, but looking back at the quarter, we noticed some misjudgments, so we forced ourselves to crunch the numbers this time to establish a more accurate ranking.

During this process, we found that some strategies had clear-cut numbers, while others were tough to calculate (requiring lots of 'assumptions' and 'premises'). Additionally, there were infrastructure strategies that might show a small immediate impact but are absolutely essential in the mid-to-long term. Nevertheless, there's a huge difference between pondering things from an impact perspective versus not doing it at all.

It helps us gauge which strategy will contribute more significantly toward hitting our Company OKRs, allows us to revisit epics we were running purely out of momentum, and lets us make decisions to put them on hold. We can also adjust the Company OKRs themselves from the bottom up based on the actual size of the impact.

We spent a solid two hours setting priorities and distributing them among each squad. After that, we drew a realistic line based on available resources. Looking at the organized strategies, it became clear whether each one was aimed at boosting DAU or increasing revenue, and having their impact quantified made it much easier to judge what was more important. If we ever need to pivot our strategy during the quarter due to unforeseen variables, we agreed to flexibly reroute to the next priority strategy on this list. Since this process was a new attempt, it definitely wasn't easy, but if we continue to refine and advance it step by step, I believe we'll be capable of impactful planning and operations every quarter.

D. Day 1 at 8:30 PM: Free Brainstorming Session

You'd think everyone would be exhausted after using their brains non-stop for six hours, but we kicked off another product brainstorming session while grabbing some room service. Why are the in-app journeys for Android and iOS similar, yet their retention rates differ so wildly? Why do our existing heavy users who used Alarmy so well gradually churn? Starting with these heavyweight questions, we tossed around our thoughts and generated hypotheses that are genuinely worth testing. This was also something we had prepared for by jotting down things we've always wondered about the product, and we ended up discussing the top three most impactful questions from that list.

E. Day 1 at 11:00 PM: Wrapping Up

Excluding the brainstorming session, it was a six-hour workshop; including it, an eight-hour marathon had finally come to an end. In the peace and quiet, everyone was able to dive deeply into product discussions. Despite our focus running on fumes toward the end, everyone stayed resilient and managed to cover all the topics we set out to tackle. (I thought we started pretty early, but we should probably kick it off even earlier next time.) It wasn't until 11 PM that we could finally transition to casual chatter—like how we all spent our Chuseok holidays.

F. Day 2 at 8:00 AM: Healing

Since we smoothly wrapped up the workshop amid the quiet, tranquil, and comfortable vibes of Ananti, it was time to enjoy the rest of the facilities. Everyone spent their morning in Gapyeong in their own unique way. Personally, I wanted to hit the trekking course, but I had to give it up because it was raining; instead, I enjoyed a morning workout and the open-air hot spring. A member who brought their swimming gear went for a morning swim at the Water House, while another member took a relaxing morning bath in the huge tub in our room. It was a time for everyone to wash away the fatigue from the previous day.

G. Day 2 at 10:00 AM: One Last Recap

An hour before check-out, we all gathered for one final session to recap the previous day's discussions. Over coffee, we chatted for another hour about whether there was anything crucial we missed due to exhaustion the night before, or if any action items were left too vague. Looking back, this time was incredibly important. Just like pearls need to be strung together to make a necklace, the deep and intense discussions from the day before needed to be strung into practical action items, and looking at them again with fresh minds revealed quite a few pieces that needed proper stringing. In particular, we needed to organize the ideas we brainstormed at the very end of yesterday, and as a result of the talks, we also needed to re-sync on our Company OKRs. We spent a neat hour organizing everything and officially wrapped up the entire workshop.

This workshop had exceptionally high engagement. Since it was a quarter filled with deep concerns about our performance, the POs prepared a ton, and because we were joined not only by POs but also by leads from related departments (data, marketing, and engineer groups), we were able to have much more solid (and practical) discussions. Now, all that's left is to perfectly execute the derived action items without missing a beat. And, of course, to see those action items yield great results. It really makes me look forward to Q4.

Great job at the workshop, everyone. :D

Here's to a Q4 that's even more spectacular than Q3!