Jira is one of the most popular project management tools trusted by organizations that span the globe and small businesses equally. The versatility and the flexibility of Jira make it easy for teams and organizations to use it for various purposes. The basic building blocks of Jira are issues, which can take many shapes and forms. It’s this versatility that helps to plan, track, and manage tasks for millions of people every day and every moment.
Integrating OKRs for Jira can add to these capabilities and provide a link to the overall company strategy. Teams using Jira for their daily work can connect elements of it to their OKRs in the same interface and leverage the benefits of analytics capabilities bundled in Jira by Atlassian for tasks that are beyond simply tracking their OKRs.
Managing OKRs with JIRA:
Issues in Jira are very versatile, and allow users to create workarounds and integrations that can allow setting goals and linking activities. This simplifies issues for organizations and managers who can help their employees to have their goals present in front of the main platform they work on for most of their days. This advantage of having the Goals and Key Results related to them accessible at all times ensures they don’t have to change windows or virtual workspaces in order to check or update their goals. The freedom and compulsion of not using another tool just to update their goals simplify the act of prioritizing their tasks according to their goal.
How do I use OKR tracking in Jira?
Jira users can link their activities in the UpRaise for Employee Success platform to their respective goals. They can track their goals without having to leave Jira and still provide transparency for the rest of the organization that doesn’t use Jira as often as they do. The tasks and activities are collated on the platform, and other solutions from UpRaise Suite can make the task of sharing goals and objectives easier from Jira. The tools offer transparency and alignment across different tires, and are usually restricted by the number of Jira licenses they can be used from. They help in simplifying cross-functional collaboration while enhancing the analytics capabilities even if some teams work in an isolated OKR-environment.
Jira teams can therefore link their tasks to organizational goals better and align their work to the organization’s vision (which is translated into well-defined Objectives). The teams they collaborate with can see the goals and corresponding Key Results from their Jira instances. Also, other teams can get insights into their Jira initiatives via UpRaise for Employee Success. What’s more, this allows the analytics component of UpRaise for Employee Success to gather information and provide comprehensive insights on goal progress, quality, and confidence across the organization.
JIRA and OKRs
Statistics show that 60% – 90% of strategy execution ends up in failure, and the main reason for this is the gap between the vision of an organization and the approaches made to align this vision with the goals and key results of different teams that are expected to contribute towards the goal. This issue can be tackled by adopting agile processes that can ring in changes to project management practices. These changes derived from agile methodology can be implemented on a team level where OKRs represent the outcomes that are being aimed at. The process aims to direct the efforts of teams in the business direction pointed by the vision. The flexibility of OKRs and the robust nature of the agile process can together boost the potential to continuously align work with the company’s mission while boosting employee engagement and growth. The increased focus brought by the combination improves the quality of work too.
Alignment with Strategic Goals
Adopting the Agile approach can serve as a strong foundation that introduces meaningful processes, practices, and principles into the everyday work of the employees. The iterations of these processes can show ways to improve the rate of collaboration within and between teams, and nudge employees to be proactive. The transparency necessitated by OKRs allows changes on a team and individual level, bringing the best of both frameworks that employees can benefit from.
