Objective alignments
Concept
Objective alignment in OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) is a crucial concept that ensures that all the goals and efforts within an organization are coordinated and aligned toward a common goal. It involves setting clear objectives at different levels of the organization that cascade down from top-level strategic objectives to departmental or team-level objectives.
UpRaise allows this top-down/bottom-up approach with respect to objectives along with different views like hierarchy, explorer and roadmap view so users can see the bigger picture.
Create alignment
Navigate to an objective details page (by clicking on the objective title that needs to be aligned)>> Scroll down to the Alignments section.
Click on Add new >> Click on Contributes to/Receive contribution from
Contributes to
Contributes to means, the current objective is contributing to the progress of other objective/s.
With the above navigation, click on the Contributes to option. Notice the side navigation that has the Suggestions tab. Select one of the suggestions, click on Next.
Define weightage >> Save (if weightage is turned off, it won’t be asked)
In the other tabs, Search and Create, UpRaise allows you to search the objectives or create new ones to be aligned right away.
Receives contribution from
Receives contribution from means, the current objective is receiving the contribution from the progress percentage of other objective/s.
With the above navigation, click on the Receives contribution from option. Notice the side navigation that has the Suggestions tab. Select one of the suggestions, click on Next.
Define weightage >> Save (if weightage is turned off, it won’t be asked)
In the other tabs, Search and Create, UpRaise allows you to search the objectives or create new ones to be aligned right away.
#BestPractices
Create alignments from different places/navigations -
Objective details page - Both alignments can be added from the objective details page.
Hierarchy view - Receiving contribution alignment can also be created from hierarchy view.
Add new objective pop-up - Contributes to alignment can be created while creating a new objective.
Weightage
Progress roll-up
Alignments views (Hierarchy tab on OKRs page)
Hierarchy tab provides a quick view of alignments with three different views listed below -
Hierarchy view
Explorer view
Roadmap view
In all the above views, one can see objective-to-objective alignments along with Key results, Jira issues as KRs, and actions associated with objectives at all levels. Navigate Hierarchy tab on OKRs page from the UpRaise main menu.
Hierarchy view
Once objectives are aligned, one can view these alignments in a broader and better way from hierarchy view.
Notice the image below, "Company Objective 2" receives contributions from the other 3 team objectives. Whereas "Company objective 1" receives contributions from two different levels. One directly from “Team objective 1” and another indirectly from “Individual objective 1”, since it contributes to "Team objective 1"
Explorer view
In explorer view, one can see the same objectives but in a different format. Here, objectives are displayed in a list view that can be expanded further for relevant objectives. As shown in the image, notice that the same objectives can be viewed differently.
Roadmap view
Roadmap view is yet another way of looking at objective alignments. As you can notice in below image, the objective hierarchy is available, and at the same time, you can see the objective timespan across the calendar. This way it helps users to track the objective roadmap on the calendar-type view.
Filters
Below filters explained below are applicable to all views on the Hierarchy tab
UpRaise has filters for hierarchy and explorer views, which make it easy to view objectives and KRs. e.g., if there are overall 100+ KRs in the system, then it becomes difficult to toggle between KRs and alignments, which is where filters help to manage these views. Once filtered, the system will remember that selection, and when users come back to the Hierarchy/Explorer view. Below are the available filters on hierarchy and explorer views.
Show (key results, KR actions, issues in epic, sub-tasks in issues)
Over time, when there are hundreds/thousands of objectives in the system, the number of KRs may go up by almost three to five times the number of objectives. It will increase more when there are KR actions, issues, and subtasks aligned. In such cases, the hierarchy view becomes a bit difficult to use, and it is important to be able to search for the relevant information. Use this filter to define whether to view objectives or objectives and KRs both in the hierarchy view.
To view objective hierarchy with Jira epics/issue & sub-tasks, KR actions, it's compulsory to select Key results filter options as KR actions and Jira epics/issues/sub-tasks are associated with KRs.
Search by
Search by option allows filtering the view by objective, owner, or team. Depending on the selected filters you would be able to select other relevant filters.
Search by objective - Objectives & alignments are displayed for the selected objective
Search by owner - Objectives & alignments are displayed for the selected objective owner
Search by team - Objectives & alignments are displayed for the selected team
Objectives
With this filter one can view a single objective’s alignments. This is handy when user wants to understand the progress and alignments of a specific objective.
Objective cycle
This filter is used to display objectives from a specific objective cycle.
Top level objectives (objective status filter)
Use this filter to check objective alignments of different top company objectives in selected status/es. Just click on top company objectives field and check/uncheck one of the multiple statuses from the drop-down. You will see all the top objectives are reflected according to the objective statuses you have selected.
The reason why this filter only applies to the 'top company objectives' is - if we apply the same filter at all levels, it may end up hiding OKRs that do not match the filter. They are hidden just because at least one of the objectives in their hierarchy matches the status filters.
Delete/Edit alignments
Alignments can be edited or deleted from the respective parent objectives detail page. In terms of editing one can only change the weightage of the alignment.
For deleting, one can directly remove the association of parent-child relation of two objectives by deleting the alignment. This impacts the progress of parent objectives, and relevant updated are recorded in the objective history.
Visibility of objectives