Using JIRA to Manage OKRs
By: Rachael Voluck
Tags: Jira, Project Management, Efficiency, Status Report, Okr

OKRs are becoming an increasingly popular way to track team objectives & goals, although they don’t come with a one-size-fits-all method for reporting on them.

The Problem: Spreadsheets

From what I’ve seen, most companies are generally managing OKRs with a spreadsheet, which comes with a laundry list of challenges.

Challenges with OKR tracking for individual teams:

Manual inconsistent process — Spreadsheets are manually updated and formatting isn’t always consistent across teams, so it requires the viewer to context switch when viewing different team’s OKRs. It’s also difficult to easily track when individual OKR status was last updated, and if the OKR is on track.

— Spreadsheets are manually updated and formatting isn’t always consistent across teams, so it requires the viewer to context switch when viewing different team’s OKRs. It’s also difficult to easily track when individual OKR status was last updated, and if the OKR is on track. Long-term analysis — It’s extremely difficult to track what OKRs moved from quarter to quarter across teams.

— It’s extremely difficult to track what OKRs moved from quarter to quarter across teams. Static reporting — It’s difficult to track open questions, related documentation, concrete development work, etc. related to OKRs.

Challenges with planning for multiple teams at once:

Cross-functional visibility — It’s difficult to quickly tell which teams are working on priorities within the same initiative or project within a department. Teams within a department don’t have great visibility into what other teams are working on, and how commitments are related across teams.

— It’s difficult to quickly tell which teams are working on priorities within the same initiative or project within a department. Teams within a department don’t have great visibility into what other teams are working on, and how commitments are related across teams. Future planning — Spreadsheets don’t include a clean way to track & prep OKRs for future quarters even though they are often discussed in advance.

The Solution: Managing OKRs with JIRA

Teams can implement simple processes to track OKRs on both the individual team level and department level to address the problems identified above. Check out the process outlined below for tips on how to get this up & running on your team.

Individual Team Level OKR Tracking

Step 1: Implement an OKR JIRA project for your team

Use a JIRA project to track OKRs for each team within your department. This JIRA project becomes the system of record for your OKRs.

Use sprints in the backlog to represent business quarters (1 sprint per quarter), Epics to represent objectives, and Stories to represent key results

The current quarter should be represented with an active sprint and future quarters can be prepped in the backlog. Name the sprints to indicate the business quarter that they represent.

This solution also introduces as a simple task board, which is helpful for team members to track their contributions to the team’s OKRs. Configure your task board to have swimlanes dicated by Epics so the task board has a row for each objective and the key results for it are cards on the board.

Step 2: Build a wiki status report in Confluence to automatically report on your OKRs

To communicate with stakeholders who prefer a 1-pager / who aren’t in the weeds in JIRA you can create a status report that pulls data from JIRA and updates in real-time based on activity in JIRA. I like to create a wiki status report for each quarter.

To do so, create a table in a new wiki page and use the “JIRA Issues” macro, with a simple query pulling the OKRs from your sprint. Your query will likely looking something like [PROJECT = {ProjectName} AND sprint = “Q2 2019” AND issuetype = Story]

Outside of basic updates to the report’s queries at the beginning of the quarter, this requires no maintenance to maintain each quarter.

Step 3: Implement additional visualization tooling if desired

If desired, you can also use JIRA plugins to implement additional visualization for your OKR reporting. These plugins will pull data from your OKR JIRA board and visualize in a Gantt chart format. Typically the only requirements for these types of tools are accurate data in the start and due date fields for each Story.

Check out these tools for ideas of plug-ins that might work to generate a Gantt view: WBS Gantt-Chart for JIRA, Big Gantt for JIRA, BigPicture.

Department Level Overall OKR Tracking

Step 1: Create your department wide JIRA board

You can use a JIRA board to pull data from each team’s OKR project. Create a new JIRA board and modify the query for the board so it pulls data from every OKR JIRA project within your department.

This board will provide a macro view of a task board for your entire department’s OKRs in one place, while maintaining team level ability to customize OKR tracking separately within their individual JIRA project.

This solution allows you to see everyone’s backlog in the same place so you can view upcoming quarterly priorities across teams.

I suggest using standardized labels to tag stories across teams so you can unlock the advantages of quick filters on your JIRA board. Examples include tagging all stories related to a specific project so you can view which teams are contributing to the project as a whole.

Step 2: Build your department wide wiki status report in Confluence

Similar to the team level status report, this can be used to easily provide a consolidated view of OKR status for those that are less likely to be in the weeds with JIRA. The approach is similar to the team level report, just modify the query so it pulls data from multiple projects & sprints as needed.

This requires no maintenance to update the status report as it automatically pulls the data from JIRA.

Step 3: Implement additional department wide visualization tooling if desired

If you decided to implement additional roadmap visualization above you can tweak that reporting to include projects from all teams in a new report.

This can be especially helpful for executive-level communication and reporting on OKRs.

The Solution: Advantages

Managing OKRs for teams & departments in JIRA comes with a wide range of advantages that pay-off over time.

Simple — This process uses tools everyone already has access to (assuming your company uses JIRA), it’s low cost to update quarter-over-quarter, and is straightforward for teams to maintain.

— This process uses tools everyone already has access to (assuming your company uses JIRA), it’s low cost to update quarter-over-quarter, and is straightforward for teams to maintain. Helps teams stay organized — This process comes with a task board that can help visual learners track their commitments. You can also build individual task boards, status reports, or dashboards if they’re helpful. These can be used to drive 1:1s and track performance / contributions quarter-over-quarter.

— This process comes with a task board that can help visual learners track their commitments. You can also build individual task boards, status reports, or dashboards if they’re helpful. These can be used to drive 1:1s and track performance / contributions quarter-over-quarter. Dynamic — Tracks history, attachments, comments, custom fields, etc. You also get a lot of metadata about your OKRs for free, like when they were created, last updated, etc.

— Tracks history, attachments, comments, custom fields, etc. You also get a lot of metadata about your OKRs for free, like when they were created, last updated, etc. Reporting — Unlocks the ability to have custom Dashboards for your department overall and each team in JIRA based on the metadata you’re collecting about your work. These are really simple to setup and update if needed and can be very helpful for decision making. You’ll also have the ability to query to answer questions like how many OKRs bleed into multiple quarters?

Unlocks the ability to have custom Dashboards for your department overall and each team in JIRA based on the metadata you’re collecting about your work. These are really simple to setup and update if needed and can be very helpful for decision making. You’ll also have the ability to query to answer questions like how many OKRs bleed into multiple quarters? Customizable — This is basic tooling that is general enough to extend to each team, but can be easily specialized for individual team needs / constraints.

— This is basic tooling that is general enough to extend to each team, but can be easily specialized for individual team needs / constraints. Tailors communication to multiple audiences — JIRA becomes the system of record for OKRs, although you get multiple ways to visualize and communicate OKRs for free by doing so. You can use one process to communicate to those that want to be in the weeds and those that only want high level information all at once.

The Solution: Considerations