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 above given navigation, click on Contributes to pop up, Search for a relevant objective/pick one from suggestions. New objectives can also be created to be aligned right there.
Define weightage >> Save (if weightage is turned off, it won’t be asked from you)

Receives contribution from

Receives contribution from means, the current objective is receiving the contribution from the progress percentage of other objective/s.

With above given navigation, click on Receives contribution from pop up, Search for a relevant objective/pick one from suggestions. New objectives can also be created to be aligned right there.
Define weightage >> Save (if weightage is turned off, it won’t be asked from you)

#BestPractices

Create alignemnts 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

Read how https://amoeboids.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/UPFJ/pages/1395359783 work in UpRaise.

Progress roll up

What is progress roll up?

When OKRs are aligned at different as well as same levels, objectives at a lower level contribute to the ones at a higher level i.e. when progress is made on lower-level objectives, depending on the alignment weightage it impacts the progress of all objectives that directly or indirectly receive a contribution from it.

In the example above, progress update in company 4 objective impacts the progress of company 2 as well as company 1. This roll up can go up to as many levels as required.

Calculation Example

Exact progress calculation formula will depend on the weightage of links involved as well as presence/absence of children key results & alignments.

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 contribution from other 3 team objectives. Whereas, "Company objective 1" receives contribution 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 the same objectives can be viewed differently.

Roadmap view

Roadmap view is yet another of looking at objective alignments. As you can notice in below image, objective heirarchy is available and at the same time you can see the objective timespan accross the calendar. This way it helps users to tack the objective roadmap on the calendar type view.

Filters

Below explained filters are applicable for 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, that is where filters help to manage these views. Once filtered, the system will remember that selection and when users come back to Hierarchy/Explorer view. Below are 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 almost by three-five times of the number of objectives. It will increase more when there are KR actions, issues, and subtasks aligned. In such cases, 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 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 to filter 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 selected objective
Search by owner - Objectives & alignments are displayed for selected objective owner
Search by team - Objectives & alignments are displayed for 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.

UpRaise apps for Jira - Documentation