The Company
Started in 2013 by two entrepreneurial DIY enthusiasts, ManoMano runs Europe’s largest online marketplace for services and products focused on DIY, home, and garden improvement. Their goal? To help DIY enthusiasts and tradespeople improve homes responsibly and sustainably.
The Challenge
Running two online platforms from multiple offices around Europe required a lot of technology and an agile mindset. ManoMano adopted the OKR framework in 2021 to foster focus and alignment on goals across the organization.
They didn’t use an OKR tool, at first. Instead, they used to track their OKRs on different documents. “ManoMano is a very data-driven company. We work with a lot of data and pull from almost every input channel you can imagine,” said Ramon Salla, Agile Coach at ManoMano. “When we started using OKRs, teams used their own spreadsheets and tools. We had all this data that was scattered across different sources, which made pulling information tedious and slow.”
Having so many different sources also made it difficult for their teams to focus and work on the right metrics. While it’s common for many companies that are just starting their OKR journey to try out different ways of running OKRs—such as varying the length of one cycle or adjusting their scoring system. It’s important to track these changes closely with an app or OKR management tool to find the right metrics that work for them.
But ManoMano didn’t start with one. Without a central tool to track all these changes, teams found it difficult to align and agree on a single set of metrics for their OKRs. “We realized we needed to have a source of truth that one, would aggregate and house all the data that the teams were generating on their OKRs, and be a place of reference for when we review our progress at the end of the cycle,” Ramon said.
The Solution
Other plugins mainly focused on creating and filtering for objectives and key results. They didn’t go any deeper; OKR for Jira did. With OKR for Jira, we could see information such as which OKRs are at risk, which were updated most recently, and how team OKRs connected to the company OKRs right out of the box.
Ramon Salla Rovira, Agile Coach at ManoMano
ManoMano started looking for a tool at the end of 2021, hoping to have a solution in place by January so that they could start the new quarter off on the right foot. They chose OKR for Jira, attracted to its ability to present information goals at risks and updates in helpful graphics, and its compatibility with Jira.
The team found OKR for Jira easy to implement. Most of the team were already familiar with Jira, so the app’s seamless connection with Jira made adoption a breeze.
Ramon also highlighted the support from Digital Toucan as one of the app’s best features, saying, “For most of us, the best feature is the team behind the tool, who have always been receptive to feedback and open to collaboration. We can work with Digital Toucan to customize certain features to better suit our needs and even suggest new ideas that would be implemented within a short time—this great relationship is one of the many reasons we stick with the app.”
The Result
The OKR for Jira app is a must-have tool. It’s beautiful, it’s easy to use. It creates a source of truth for our OKRs that everyone can refer to. It’s also easy to configure to our needs, making it easy for our teams to customize it to how we run our OKRs at ManoMano.
Ramon Salla Rovira, Agile Coach at ManoMano
With the OKR for Jira app, ManoMano has managed to cut down the number of spreadsheets used. Tracking individual progress has never been easier, and with everything consolidated in one place, employees are now focusing on the right metrics for their OKRs.
The app also helps ManoMano maintain a high level of transparency on its goals. Teams can now see each other’s goals and top-level strategic OKRs. They can now track progress with ease and quickly pull information for review meetings.
“The OKR for Jira app works well with how we run the OKR framework,” Ramon said. “It has plenty of features that allow us to adapt the app to our process. It doesn’t force us to work in one way or another.” He highlighted OKR for Jira’s dashboard plugin as an example, explaining how it enables ManoMano’s managers to customize their own dashboards, setting custom filters and tables that correspond to their individual teams, making it even easier for them to monitor their teams’ goals effectively.
Today, the app has become ManoMano’s main tool for OKR management, providing their teams with one source of truth for all the OKRs and a central platform to set, manage and review their goals.