Design KRAs fail for a predictable reason: they are written as a list of projects. Projects get deprioritised, merged or killed, and the designer's goals die with them — through no fault of theirs.
// Anchor to outcomes and craft, not to projects
“Improve checkout completion on the surfaces you own” survives a re-plan. “Ship the new address selector by Q2” does not. Name the outcome, and let the vehicle change.
// Three layers, not ten lines
Business impact, craft depth, and org contribution. Business impact keeps the work honest. Craft depth is what makes someone better this year than last. Org contribution — mentoring, systems, hiring, writing — is what compounds beyond one person.
// Write the evidence up front
At goal-setting, agree what proof will look like: which metric, which artefact, whose feedback. It removes the December scramble to reconstruct a year, and it makes ratings a conversation about evidence rather than memory.
// Revisit quarterly, rewrite rarely
A quarterly check should adjust the vehicle, not the destination. If the destination keeps changing, the KRA was scoped to a roadmap that was never stable — fix the framing, not the person.