Use goals to track your OKRs across Atlassian products
15 min
Beginner
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Define OKRs
- Describe the value of setting OKRs
- Describe how Atlassian products support OKRs
- Use Atlassian best practices to set effective OKRs
How can you align your organization to a shared mission?
OKRs can help you get onboard with a common goal. OKRs are a collaborative goal-setting framework for organizations invented by John Doerr. The “O” represents objectives and the “KR” represents key results.
Objectives define what you want to accomplish. They should be significant, concrete, action-oriented, and inspirational.
Key results define how you want to reach those objectives. They should be specific, measurable, verifiable, and time-bound.
In other words, the objective is the ambitious, broader goal that your organization should target. The key results explain how you will achieve that ambitious objective. Often, you’ll set OKRs for a year or a fiscal quarter.
👉 For example: A company has the objective to increase market share. The objective has three key results:
- Increase page one search result rankings from six to 15
- Reduce customer churn by 30%
- Achieve four earned media spots
Organizations develop OKRs for their entire company. Then, teams within the company set OKRs for themselves, based on the company-wide OKRs.
👉 For example: A company has the objective to increase sales revenue. The objective has three key results:
- Increase web conversion rate by 25%
- Increase average subscription value from $300 to $500
- Reduce average days to sale from 20 to 17
Then, two teams within the company set their OKRs based on their contribution to the organizational OKR.
👇Click the tabs below to see the OKRs.
The Sales team sets an objective to increase monthly sales revenue. The objective has three key results:
- Increase web conversion rate by 25%
- Increase customer retention from 30% to 50%
- Generate 40 high-value leads per month
As part of setting OKRs, teams often score each key result to indicate how well they’re progressing towards that result. A zero means you haven’t progressed at all toward that key result, while a one means you’ve completely achieved it. Scoring OKRs helps stakeholders quickly understand how likely it is you can achieve your objectives and what the challenges are.
👉 For example: A score of 0.4 would indicate your goal is at risk, while a score of 0.8 would mean you're on track to meet your goal.
👇You can score an OKR from zero to one to indicate how it’s going.
Throughout the year or quarter for which you’ve set OKRs, you’ll update stakeholders frequently on your progress, through scoring, comments, and other communication. This keeps the organization aligned toward a specific mission.
Why should you use OKRs?
Unlike other goal-setting frameworks, OKRs are inspirational and ambitious, allowing for more agile thinking about how you accomplish the objective. They provide structure and direction without dictating a method, so your organization can respond to new ideas and situations while still accomplishing its goals.
Setting OKRs for your entire organization unifies their efforts. Enabling teams to set their own OKRs that support broader company objectives ensures that goals are relevant to their work while staying aligned with other teams.
How does Atlassian support an organization’s OKRs?
Atlassian enables teams to write, track, and update their OKRs as goals in Atlassian products. You can quickly get to your goals from Atlassian products, embed them as smart links, and connect them to work in Jira.
👇Here’s an example of an OKR in Atlassian products.
Atlassian users can search for, follow, and comment on goals, keeping engaged and updated on teams' progress towards company objectives.
How do you set effective OKRs?
If you set OKRs correctly, they can provide a clear direction for the entire organization to work toward. They can define positive progress and give teams something meaningful to accomplish. We’ve collected some best practices for setting effective OKRs.
👇Click the boxes below to explore OKR best practices.
Let’s explore some examples
Let’s consider if these OKRs apply best practices.
Objective: Increase community and donor engagement
Key results:
- Grow donations by 20%
- Increase the subscriber base by 25%, with half of new subscribers from the immediate community
- Host one gala event with participation from a minimum of three new foundations
☝️What do you think of this OKR?
Objective: Become a market leader in IT consulting
Key results:
- Launch our new services package
- Hold five webinars on IT consulting
☝️What do you think of this OKR?
How was this lesson?
next lesson
Set goals across Atlassian products
- How do you set goals in Atlassian products?
- Configure a project for your goals
- Configure goals