Manage objectives

.Objective types and when to use them

 

When to use

Examples

Company

Compnay level objectives are used to set overarching goals for the entire organization. They provide a high-level direction and focus for the company as a whole. Company objectives serve as a guidepost for the entire organization to work towards.

  • Increase absolute marketshare in EU market by end of the fiscal year

  • Develop customer obsession across the entire customer experience

Team

Team level objectives are used to set specific goals for teams or departments within an organization. Majority of the times these are meant to help the organisation achieve its company level goals.

In the context of above company level objectives, team objectives could be -

  • Develop and implement a GTM campaign in EU that focuses solely on gaining the market share (For Marketing team)

  • Reduce product defects and issues reported by customers from Persona X segment, through rigorous quality testing and continuous improvement efforts. (For Product Quality Team )

Individual

Individual objectives are specific goals set for individual employees within the organization. These objectives should align with the team and company-level objectives and contribute to the overall success of the organization.

These individual objectives are tailored to the specific roles and responsibilities of each employee. They should be challenging yet achievable, and they contribute to the overall success and achievement of team and company level objectives.

In the context of Marketing team’s objective above here are some individual objectives based on individual’s roles -

  1. Digital Marketing Manager 1 :

    • Analyze GTM strategies from other regions & propose a radically different GTM strategy for EU launch

  2. Digital Marketing Manager 2 :

    • Get acquainted with the local regulations by coordinating with our legam teams in EU

  3. Product Marketing Manager :

    • Execute our usual PLG motion for a new market launch (EU)

  4. Customer Support Manager :

    • Prepare our EU focused knowledge base to help Support team on the field

Additional levels based on team type

UpRaise makes it possible to have various layers of additional objective levels if the org size demands so. These additional levels work the team level/are similar to team level. However, can be created based on the team types configured in Company directory. Read below related documents-

  • Product

    • Release at least X number of feature enhancements based on customer feedback.

  • User Adoption and Training

    • Conduct X number of user training sessions/webinars to drive product adoption.

Create objectives

Navigate to OKRs from left navigation >> Click on Add objective >> This opens up the Add objective pop-up. On this pop-up, below explained fields will be displayed based on the level of objective one is creating.

#Permissions

If logged in user does not see Add objective option or a certain level options in Levels dropdown, that means they do not have permissions to create objectives at all/for certain level.

#BestPractices

Apart from the above navigations Add objective option is available from user and team profiles, Plus icon in the left navigation & while creating alignments.

Field name

Description

Level

Applicable to all levels of objectives

Select one of the relevant levels of objectives based on what needs to be achived and who is responsible for it.

Objective cycle

Applicable to all levels of objectives

Select the timeframe/cycle in which the objective should be executed. This also defines the max duration of the objective. Read more about Manage objective cycles.

Title

Applicable to all levels of objectives

Title of the objective

Start and Due date

Applicable to all levels of objectives

Start and Due date of the objective should stay within the objective cycle’s timeframe.

Owner

Applicable to all levels

Owner of the objective is an individual who will be accountable for its success or failure.

Team

Applicable to Team, Additional objective levels based on team type

Groups to which the objective is associated. It could be a functional team or a cross-functional team as well as other ‘special’ types of levels based on team types.

Visibilty

Applicable to all levels of objectives

This helps to define who can view the objective & corresponding key results. There are three visibility options

  • All users - With this option objective cab be made visible to all active UpRaise users.

  • Selected Units/teams - With this option, make objectives visible to users from selected teams/Units.

  • Selected users - Only selected individuals will be able to view the given objective & corresponding key results.

Please note that based on User permissions some users can see the OKRs even if this configuration does not mean to.

Labels

Applicable to all levels of objectives

Classifying objectives with different labels can help in different ways. Some examples of labels are Growth, Innovation, Customer Experience, Budget-Intensive, Resource Intensive, Time-Intensive.

Description

Applicable to all levels of objectives

Description of the objective.

Contributes to

Applicable to all levels of objectives

While creating objective, one can align it right away if the alignments are made clear. Otherwise, skip this option as it is not a mandatory field. Read Alignments for more details.

Weightage

Applicable to all levels of objectives

Define weightage of the alignment that decides the impact of contributing objectives progress on the parent one. Skip it if not creating and alignment.

 

Objective progress updates

Althought there is a Punch-in action on the Objective details page, the progress of objectives should ideally be derived from its Key Result types, creation, and other actions and Alignments. That is why Punch in action is disabled when there are one or more KRs/alingmnets under the objective (if the link weightage is non-zero).

Depending on the weightage of KRs and alignments objective progress is calculated by system. Read below documentations for more details -

Objective statuses

Through its lifecycle, an objective can go through multiple statuses. Depending on the path objective has taken, change of its status will be reflected in the history.

Statuses explained below are applicable to all levels of objectives.

  • Scheduled - When an objective's start date lies in future, its status is automatically set to scheduled. Progress updates cannot be made on a scheduled objective.

  • Ready - When the objective start date is reached, the system automatically updates its status to 'ready'. Ready objectives can be punched-in, either directly or via children key results.

  • In Progress - An objective whose status is ready, when receives a punch-in or its progress is updated through an auto roll up - turns into 'in progress'.

  • Ready for Grading - On reaching the objective end date, system auto-updates it is status to 'ready for grading'. End users have 'grade & close' option available when the objective is in this state. (If in OKR settings grading type is set to opinion scale or radio button)

  • Ready to close - On reaching the objective end date, system auto-updates it is status to 'ready to close'. End-users have to 'close' option available when the objective is in this state. (If in OKR settings grading type is set to 'none')

  • Carried Forward - When an objective has been worked upon in a cycle and is not yet fully achieved, but still it is important enough to be executed in another cycle - in this case, one can 'carry forward' that objective. Carried forward is the original objective from which another copy is created in the intended cycle. Newly created objective will follow normal lifecycle of an objective whereas carried forward will remain in its original cycle.

  • Closed - Objective owner or any other user can close the objective either by completing or skipping the grading process. Once closed the objective cannot be edited. If reopened, objective is brought back to ready for grading status. 

  • Abandoned - Apart from the ones in the chart above, there is 'abandoned'. As the name suggests, UpRaise users can set the objective to Abandoned any time a decision is made that the corresponding objective will not be pursued anymore. Do note that, similar to closed, abandoned objectives cannot be edited nor they will have any further progress impact.

Other actions related to objectives

Once the objectives are created, there are multiple subsequent actions available that make objective management easy and effective.

Below are the possible actions for objectives. Click on the below actions to get more detailed guide for each actions -

  • Clone - Read Clone an objective

  • Move - Move an objective

  • Convert - Read https://amoeboids.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/UPFJ/pages/1395130516

  • Abandon - Abandon an objective if it is no longer relevant but should not be deleted

  • Delete - Delete the objective

  • Edit - Edit any objective attribute, details, etc.

  • Comment - One can add comments with @ mentions to address a specific UpRaise user/s. You can also add attachments in the comments to keep them aligned with them each comment you add.

  • Punch-in - This action is enabled only if there are no KRs or alignments created under the objective