Support for Atlassian Goals and Projects

[Stephen Neil]

Hi everyone,

I'm starting to explore Atlassian Goals and Projects (under Atlassian Home) within our non‑profit and I’d really value hearing from others in the community.

Two questions:

1. How is adoption of Goals and Projects going for you?

   • Are teams actively using them?
   • What’s helped (or hindered) take‑up so far?

2. How do you handle support issues or bugs with Goals and Projects?

   • Given these features are free and don’t appear to have a support path or community space of their own, I’m curious what others do when something doesn’t behave as expected.

For example, today I noticed that a user with View‑only access to a Project was able to remove linked work from the “Where this work is tracked” section. In this case the linked work was an Epic that they didn't have access to so all that showed for them was a message that read "We couldn't find the linked Jira work item. It may have been removed, or you may not be able to view it" along with the option of removing that link! So whilst they couldn’t edit the About text, assignee, contributors, or access permissions for the project, they could still unlink work items used for tracking. That feels like a bug which I’d have raised this with Atlassian Support, but Goals and Projects don’t appear to exist as supported products, and I couldn’t find a clear route to log or discuss this formally.

A related (and possibly more fundamental) question on visibility and security:

• Today, Goals are visible to everyone with access to the space.
• Projects behave the same way, though there are some additional access controls there.
• I understand goal‑level security is on Atlassian’s roadmap, but until that exists I suspect it may influence adoption in our org — certainly for more sensitive goals, sub‑goals, or outcomes, which we’d likely avoid logging for now.

My current thinking is to:

• Start with my own IT goals,
• Make their linkage to organisational strategic priorities explicit, and
• Use that as a way to improve information flow, reduce silos, and model good practice — hopefully encouraging wider adoption over time.

I’d be really interested in:

• How others are navigating visibility and permissions today
• Whether you treat Goals and Projects as “safe for reporting” yet
• How you raise issues or get advice when there’s no clear support path

Looking forward to learning from your experiences!

[Michelle Melancon]

I'm happy to answer any questions on Goals, Projects or planning in general. 

[Paul Atfield]

We have started using Goals at EOF, moving away from a spreadsheet based approach. We started small and are iterating as we go.

Some features we have found particularly useful are getting the full organisation involved in updating goals, using Rovo to analyse the data, and the simplicity and flexibility of the features. It is also quite forgiving.

We will update more as we progress. Please feel free to reach out for more details.

[Stephen Neil]

Hi Paul, that’s really encouraging to hear — thanks for sharing.

We’re also starting small and iterating. We moved away from spreadsheets to forms some time ago, but for me the same challenges remain: information silos, limited visibility, stale updates, and weak linkage between goals and the work actually happening.

Rovo has been great, especially for breaking down outcomes and prompting better planning conversations. I love the linkage between Projects and Jira too — it lowers the friction for providing updates, and the gentle nudges when things haven’t been updated will be genuinely helpful.

[Michelle Melancon]

@Stephen Neil  

View-only Goals have been announced; however, I'm checking with our product team on future plans for restricting Goals and Projects within a space. While I'm at it, I'll follow up on the example you shared of a user being able to edit and remove a link from a project. 

I think your approach of starting with your own goals and sharing updates with your own stakeholders is a good way to build interest among your user community.  In my experience, reporting and visibility into 'milestones' for stakeholders has been needed for quite some time. 

I will follow up as soon as I have some info to share. 

Let me know if you are able to access the Customer Feedback Portal

[Stephen Neil]

Hi Michelle, thanks for the encouragement, and for sharing the feedback portal link - the link took me here, but I found my way to the JSM customer portal from there.

Are these the places to log any issues or questions in future?
Goals App Feedback - Jira Service Management
Projects App Feedback - Jira Service Management

[Amanda Barber]

This is a great topic and I'm looking forward to the responses. I've been tinkering with Goals/Projects to keep track of my own items, but am really hoping to roll them out within my company this year. (Heck, I'd just love for us all to have some concrete goals - period!) 

You've raised some really great questions about how to navigate visibility and permissions and I'll be curious to hear more about how others handle this (as well as the size and structure of their company.)

One thing I've seen is that the community has some pretty great ideas for troubleshooting and Atlassian is usually pretty quick to reply as needed, too.

[Stephen Neil]

Thanks, Amanda — really appreciating the engagement on this topic. That’s my thinking too: use it myself first, see how it works with my team, and then I'll have something to show others what good can look like.

[Mauli Ryan]

We’re using Atlassian Goals and Projects in the Atlassian Foundation, so sharing how we’ve set it up and what’s helped adoption.

We keep a clear separation between Goals and Projects so people know what belongs where. We’ve positioned Goals and Projects as our portfolio view of important change work, not as a task tool.

Goals are used for the results we want, not the work itself. In practice, our Goals tend to be:

• Annual or multi‑quarter outcomes
• “Change the business” objectives (not day‑to‑day operations)
• Most Goals have multiple Projects feeding into them over the year

Projects are the vehicles that move the Goals

• Each Project has a simple, consistent structure:
  Why – what problem we’re solving and why it matters
  What are the key deliverables and scope
  How we’ll measure success – a few clear indicators (for example, usage, satisfaction, completion)
  
  

How we use it day to day

• Cross‑team initiatives

• Work that runs for more than a few months

• Leadership and goal leads update every month - to drive scoring
• Team updates projects every week - to drive open comms and stakeholder mgmt
• The team reads ALL updates every week - this happens through following a unique tag
• When the above is done, it boosts visibility of work, breaks down silos AND gives leadership a single place to keep across what is happening across the portfolio. 
  
  

What's helped with adoption

• Setting a straightforward process and cadence, and getting leadership buy-in to 'model' the behaviour
• Tying it into existing planning / OKR / Quarterly planning processes
• Building updates into existing rituals - stand-ups, etc
• Remove duplication - retire old artefacts (spreadsheets etc) and ensure adequate change management has been implemented 

Benefits we have seen 

• We can show how yearly objectives map to concrete initiatives and, ultimately, to outcomes for the people we serve

• Shared Projects reduce duplication and make it clear who’s doing what, and why.

• A manageable portfolio view provides all major change‑the‑business initiatives in one place
• Lastly, a general sense of the 'work being seen' effect - work is recognised, leaders can see the full picture, and work, regardless of outcome, is viewed holistically. 

[Stephen Neil]

Thanks so much, Mauli — this is incredibly helpful. Really grateful you shared this; there’s plenty here for us to digest as we shape our own approach.

We’ve invested a lot over the past few years in sharpening our strategic objectives and goals through the Vision Traction Organiser, but the way we record and share updates has still tended to create information silos. Your breakdown of how Goals and Projects can provide a shared, living portfolio view really resonates.

I’m increasingly convinced this model could help us surface work more transparently across the organisation and give teams and leaders a clearer line of sight from objectives through to outcomes.

Thanks again — hugely valuable to hear how you’ve made it work in practice.

[Nicola Sun]

Hi @Stephen Neil ,

I'm from the Goals / Projects product team - it's great to hear that your non-profit is exploring Goals and Projects. 

For any issues or bugs you come across, you can lodge a ticket with our support team.

• Select Technical issues and bugs
• Select any app (e.g. Jira, Confluence) on the same site as your Goals and Projects instance
• Include "Goals / Projects" in the issue summary and it'll get routed to our support team 

Thanks,

Nicola

[Stephen Neil]

Thanks Nicola, really appreciated - I've submitted something now under our Jira support contract (PCS-3725981). I think I was confused by the ability to select the Goals (Cloud Free) license on the Support portal, but that gives no option to log a ticket.