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Focus Compared to Goals and Projects

Greg D

Just wanted to get a discussion going around Focus compared to regular Goals and Projects. Is it mainly around the audience? To me, Goals and Projects have a ton of intrinsic value and are a natural way to connect work items up to a variety of big rocks (company OKRs, team goals, system of work, etc.).

Would Focus be the fit for the executives whereas regular Goals are the accessible bridge for all users?

What do you all think?

Comments

Frank Voss

Focus would provide broader collective high level Focus Areas, but Goal tracking in Jira can be for aligning the actual work to lower level goals. Example would be linking your Sprint Goals to the work in your sprint. If you do SAFe you could have your PI Objectives or Goals and the sprints goals as sub goals in your plan. Hope this helps.

Allan Maxwell

Here’s the simplest way to think about it:

Goals = “What outcome are we trying to achieve?”
Projects = “What major piece of work are we doing to achieve it?”
Focus = “What are we paying attention to right now across everything?”

They are designed to work together.

Bevan Williams

We're trialling this out at the moment in conjunction with Jira Align (in different portfolios).

In addition to Allan's response above, we are also seeing value in aligning the products to roles/audience in our interaction model.

Our organisation currently has a scorecard that includes outcomes and outputs. Focus provides a clean representation of this (Goals + Jira) for each org-level team, i.e., Exco, Portfolio leadership, etc. This is great as one can focus on any combination of these, almost like a virtual container.

The Projects App is gaining traction within our Programme and Portfolio management teams. While Jira Align's dependency and risk management support is far superior, Projects and Plans provide the perfect balance between simplicity and value, increasing both adoption and rigour.

We're loving the experience of trialling it out at scale and have yet to leverage the full power of Focus with the integration of our HRIS tooling for financial tracking.

MARS SARID RANGKRUD

Operational Workflow and Roles

1. Strategic Level (Focus - Executives):

Actions: The Board or Executives define the core Focus Areas for the organization, such as "Expanding Customer Base in Southeast Asia."

Rationale: To establish strategic direction and define what the organization is prioritizing at present.

2. Goal Level (Goals - Managers/Portfolio Leads):

Actions: Management breaks down the Focus Areas into measurable Goals (KPIs/OKRs), such as "Increase sales by 20% by Q3."

Rationale: To bridge the high-level vision (Focus) with tangible, verifiable targets (Goals).

3. Operational Level (Projects - Teams/Staff):

Actions: Teams create Projects or Issues in Jira to execute actual work, such as "Develop Thai Language Marketing Campaign."

Alignment: Teams must link these work items to the specific Goals defined in step 2.

Rationale: To ensure daily tasks (Outputs) directly contribute to achieving the desired organizational results (Outcomes).

Frank Voss

@MARS SARID RANGKRUD I really like your breakdown, as we are considering to add the Strategy Collection to our existing Enterprise Jira.

Thanks

Frank

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