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AgilePlace process flows

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Overview

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) provide a structured way for organizations to track and achieve their goals. In AgilePlace, OKRs are used to connect ambitious objectives with measurable key results, fostering alignment across teams and strategic initiatives. Through bidirectional connections between parent and child objectives, along with tracking progress via key results, AgilePlace ensures that every activity contributes directly to achieving broader organizational goals. This guide will walk you through creating objectives, defining key results, and aligning work with strategic goals to ensure your teams remain focused on delivering value.

New to OKRs in AgilePlace? Watch this demo video to get a quick overview:

Process steps

           

NOTE

Customers will need to onboard to Planview Admin to use Connected Portfolios and AgilePlace OKRs.

           

OKRs Process Flow AP.png

Process step Description
Create and define objectives

Create and define an objective. Objectives should be ambitious, defined concretely, and possible to implement in current conditions and timebox.

OKR levels allow you to create a hierarchy for the objectives across your organization. Utilizing multi-leveled OKRs allows you to connect and track these objectives bidirectionally.

For more information:
Align with parent and child objectives

Connect the objective to relevant parent and child objectives across boards in AgilePlace and the strategic hierarchy in Planview Portfolios. These connections create goal alignment throughout your organization.

  • The Strategy scope type is used to connect to objectives found in Portfolios.
  • The Board scope type is used to connect to objectives found in AgilePlace.
Define current and target metrics (key results) for objectives

Define key results for objectives. Key results should be clearly defined, measurable, and easily verifiable within a realistic timeline.
Align key results with activities (cards)

Connect cards on boards to key results by adding or connecting activities to key results. Your OKR board will update to show the connected cards contributing to key result progress.
Monitor progress through key results

Board owners should periodically review and update the current state of key results to see whether they are making progress toward the objective.This updates the progress percentage complete for both the key result and the objective. The objective's progress is calculated as an average of the connected key results' progress.

           

TIP

  • Track progress towards OKRs using early indicators, such as website traffic, app usage, and in-app feedback.
  • Use direct customer feedback through social media engagement, focus groups, and other channels to assess the progress of any given initiative.
  • Objectives can be long-lived (one year or longer), while key results evolve as the work progresses.

           
Adjust plan as necessary As progress toward key results is made, periodically review the overall strategic plan to ensure that focus remains on the right initiatives and activities.

Best practices

Align OKRs to business strategy
Connecting and aligning goals at every level of the organization is one of the key benefits of the OKRs framework – everyone wins when they understand how their work fits into the big picture strategy of the organization. Using an objective hierarchy – where enterprise or corporate strategy-level objectives are defined, then teams define their objectives to align to the strategy-level or levels in between – allows organizations to have bidirectional goal alignment.

Use informal language for objectives
The purpose of objectives in the OKR structure is to challenge companies to reach toward lofty, intimidating goals. Many organizations choose to use simple and informal language to write their objectives – this is intentional. To be effective, objectives must be easy to communicate and easy to understand.

Define your objectives properly
Objectives are simply defined by what is to be achieved, and should be ambitious (big-picture, aspirational), qualitative (able to be defined verbally in concrete terms), actionable (able to be implemented in current conditions), and time-bound (a timeline should be defined in the objective itself). Look at examples of OKRs from other organizations to get a better understanding of how to define OKRs.

Define specific and measurable key results
Key results make your objective actionable and determine how progress toward your objective will be measured. Key results give team members a clear-cut way of knowing whether they’re making progress, and provide leadership a subjective way of assessing performance. Key results should be measurable, specific, time-bound, and verifiable. Look at examples of OKRs from other organizations to get a better understanding of how to define key results.

Track early versus lagging indicators
Ensure the metrics you measure for key results can be collected and analyzed during the time period specified for the OKR. Many business metrics – such as revenue – are lagging indicators, and not timely or accurate enough to determine the impact of one specific change.

Reevaluate OKRs if progress slows
It can be helpful to look for patterns in OKR scoring to gauge whether your OKRs are sufficiently “sized” for your organization or team. Similarly, if your organization is struggling to make meaningful progress on most of its goals, then you might need to adjust the size or quantity of your OKRs moving forward to make them more achievable.

Create shared OKRs
Create shared OKRs if your OKRs overlap with another team’s goals.