Manage objective cycles

By Annu
6 min

 

Background

Different companies have different kinds of objectives depending on their vision and industry. But one thing that is common to all the companies is that - all the objectives/goals are planned within a set duration. Success is defined by the ability of the team to execute these within the pre-decided time frame. In UpRaise, objective cycle is necessarily a time frame that lets the UpRaise admin/super admin organise objectives. They act as containers for all levels of objectives. At the time of UpRaise installation, 4 quarterly objective cycles are inserted by default.

Manage objective cycles

Creating an objective cycle

Navigate to OKRs >> Cycles >> Add objective cycles. Clicking on the Add objective cycle, displays below pop-up.

On the Add objective cycle pop-up below fields are given, add their details -

cycle.png

Title

The summary or name of the cycle should be precise and self-explanatory. Example - Q1 2016 Objectives Cycle.

Start & end dates 

Start and end dates between which the corresponding objectives should be completed.

Description 

The description can help users understand more about the corresponding objective cycle - instructions, details, or anything that can help.

Objective grading type 

When any objective in the cycle is in Ready for grading status, OKRs can be graded. This setting makes sure what type of grading is to be used

  • Opinion scale

  • Radio buttons

  • None

None is just an option to skip objective grading, That is not an actual grading type. When you don't want to grade objective select this option. Selecting this option lets objective turn to Ready to close status once the objective/objective cycle due date is reached. 

OKR grading permissions

This setting allows you to manage who can grade the KRs in the objectives that are ready for grading. There are two options -

  • Anyone – Allows any user with the appropriate grading permissions to grade any OKR. The permissions are determined based on the roles and permission setups within the company directory.

  • Restricted to Owners Only – Restricts grading permissions solely to the respective OKR owners.

Special Cases for Jira Issue Key Results

  • If a Jira issue key result is unassigned, the objective owner can grade it.

  • Since JQL Key Results do not have specific owners they can be graded by the objective owner

Viewing and Editing Grading

  • A different user, such as "User A," can view grades assigned by other users but cannot edit them.

  • If a key result is owned by the logged-in user, only they can grade their owned KRs.

  • All the grades can also be viewed from Grades tab on objective details page.

Objective Level Remarks

  • Only the objective owner can add remarks at the objective level.

  • Other users can see remarks but cannot add or edit them.

  • Once remarks are added, they are visible in the "Grading" tab along with all user-submitted grades and remarks.

Editing Grading

  • Users can edit their own grading but not the grading of others.

OKR permissions.png

Objective can only be closed or carried forward once all key results have been graded. If any key result remains ungraded, the system does not allow objective closure or carry forward.

Editing an objective cycle

Navigation to edit an objective cycle is similar to that mentioned above for adding an objctive. On Cycles tab, click on the Actions (…) and click on Edit. Edit objective cycle pop-up opens up. Make necessary changes and click on Update. 

Deleting an objective cycle

As shown in above image earlier, navigate to Cycles tab and click on Delete. Once you confirm that objective cycle should be deleted, all the corresponding OKRs are deleted & this action cannot be reversed. Cycles are essentially containers for all objectives. Thus deleting an objective cycle means deleting all the OKRs from that objective cycle.

Objective cycles statuses

Objective cycles have start & end dates defined in their settings. Following is the list of statuses that an objective cycle goes through in its lifetime.

Scheduled 

This status is assigned to the objective cycle if its start date is in the future when the objective cycle was created. All the objectives added to this cycle are also set in 'scheduled' status, their progress cannot be updated yet.

Active 

On the start date, system automatically updates objective cycle status to active. All the corresponding objectives are set to ready status. Respective objective owners can start progress of these objectives.

Ready for Grading 

On the end date, system automatically updates objective cycle status to ready for grading. All corresponding objectives (which are not yet in ready for grading/closed/abandoned status) are also set in 'ready for grading' status when they can be graded & closed.

Ready to close

This status is applicable when the grading type is set to none. On the end date, system automatically updates objective cycle status to ready to close. All corresponding objectives (which are not yet in ready to close/closed/abandoned status) are also set in 'ready to close' status when the due date is reached.

Closed 

Once the cycle status is 'ready for grading/ready to close', an option to mark the cycle as closed will appear. This action has to be taken manually.

Objective cycle statuses turn from Active to Ready for grading once the due date is pass. With that said, it is also possible to change the status manually if needed. The option is available from Actions (…) for each cycle.

Same manual transition is possible for Active ti Ready to close when grading is not applicable in an objective cycle.

Change objective cycle grading settings

Navigate to OKRs >> Cycles tab >> Actions (for relevant cycle) >>click on Edit. Note that grading settings can be changed only for cycles with Active and Scheduled.

OKRs can be graded once they reach their due date. Possible grading types are Opinion scale & Radio buttons. The third option called None can be used to skip grading OKRs.  Depending on this selection, objective grading settings are displayed.  

 

The settings can be modified & customized in the edit mode. One can easily switch to the other type of grading. Along with types, options available within the Radio button & Opinion scale types grading are also customisable.

 

 

When the option None is selected, system will not ask to grade any of the objectives in respective objective cycle. Those objectives can be manually closed anytime or once the due date is reached. Such OKRs can be imported into forms and then graded.

 This configuration can be updated until any of the OKRs in the cycle reach to Ready for grading status. Post that the grading cannot be modified.

 

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