How to Use Tability Data to Predict Performance

You ask your team for weekly updates. But what do you do with the data they provide?

Most teams only find out they missed a goal after the quarter ends. Tability is designed to help you see it coming so you can do something about it while there's still time.

Here's how to use the data in Tability to predict how your quarter is going to go, before it's too late to change course.

The Basic Idea: Progress + Time = Prediction

Tability tracks two things that together tell a powerful story: how far along your goals are and how much time is left in the quarter. When these two numbers are out of sync, that's your early warning signal.

For example, if you're 70% through the quarter but only 30% of the way to your Key Result, you're at risk — even if everything feels fine day-to-day. Tability makes this visible automatically so you don't have to do the math yourself.

Each plan in Tability will show you how much time is left in the quarter and how much progress you’ve made in each plan at the top. This uses the average completion of all of your key results, so you can focus on teams or groups of OKRs that need the most attention.

Want to see only key results that are below a certain percentage complete? You can use the Key Result dashboard (Dashboards>Key Results) to see your distribution of progress (click on a bar to be taken to those key results), or you can use the filters to only pull up key results below a certain percentage.

Some of your key results will be linear, others won’t be. Make sure to look at progress, but also account for expected progress. Want to show your expectations on the goal? Edit your key results and set Milestones from the bottom of the target section

Will We Hit Our KRs by End of Quarter?

For each Key Result in Tability, your team will give you a confidence color that reflects not just current progress, but whether you're on track to hit your target on time. You can think of your metric as telling you what has already happened whereas your confidence tells you what will happen if you maintain your current trajectory.

Here's how to read it:

• 🟢 On track — Your team has what they need to be successful. Everything is moving in the right direction

• 🟡 At risk — You’re behind where you should be or there are hurdles that need to be avoided. Monitor these key results carefully to avoid major issues.

• 🔴 Off track — This needs attention now. There are major issues that your team needs help to solve or that will be significant blockers.

Your team should feel empowered to give their most honest assessment of their confidence. That said, they should avoid using the yellow At Risk status more than 3 times in a row– usually this is a signal that they are trying to avoid the scrutiny of a red/off track status. (You can prevent this in each plan by going to the three dots in the upper right corner and going to Plan settings).

The key habit is to look at these indicators regularly. A yellow status in week 6 is fixable. A red status in week 12 isn't. It’s also fair to question your team on why they left a status. You don’t want to see a sea of Green goals that turn red right before the quarter ends.

Start your OKR check-in meetings by looking at your red and yellow key results. Have your team include what they’ve done so far, what the hurdles or blockers are, and what they need to get the goal back green in their updates.

Where are you missing data?

The biggest blocker to success in your OKRs isn’t a red target or even poorly defined OKRs– it’s a lack of updates. You won’t know if you should give more resources to a project or if you’re likely to succeed if your team doesn’t give you updates.

What to look for:

• Any key result with a pending check-in that should have been completed

• Users with overdue check-ins (they’ve missed at least two consecutive check-ins on a single key result)

• Goals with no or ambiguous targets (either unmeasurable key results or key results with targets of going from 0% to 100%)

You can use the Filters for all of these. The Insights filter has options for all of the above.

Key Results that are missing updates have a 75% lower rate of completion than those that get updates weekly.

Talk about your OKRs out loud. For any key results that haven’t been updated, make sure to ask the key result owner to not only give you the most recent information in the meeting, but to also fill out the missing check-in in Tability anyway to make sure you can see a full running record of performance.

When the Forecast Looks Bad, That's Still Useful

A prediction of "we're not going to hit this" isn't a failure — it's information. It gives you the chance to make a conscious decision: push harder, adjust the target, or deprioritize in favor of something more impactful. All of those are better than being surprised at the end of the quarter.

Tability's job isn't to make every goal go green. It's to make sure nothing sneaks up on you.

Our recommendation is to give public praise to the first member of your team to mark a goal red. This means they’re doing what they need to do to achieve their key results. Celebrate them with a Slack or Teams message or out loud in your OKR meeting. Do the same for anyone who hasn’t missed any updates. The more you celebrate the behaviors that will make your team successful, the more likely they are to want to engage in those behaviors.

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Want to go deeper? Check out how to build a dashboard to keep your team accountable, or explore how AI mode can help you find data fast.