📈 Metrics are now available on Atlassian Goals!

[#1]

I am excited to share that you can now track and report on goals using progress metrics!

Today, we know there is no consistent way to track and report on goals with metrics. We've heard your feedback loud and clear on needing a better way to track goal progress.

With Metrics, you can track and evaluate goal progress in a more structured and digestible format. There is now a dedicated Progress field on Goals that you can use to define, track, and view goal progress so that you can communicate progress to stakeholders more effectively and drive faster, more-informed decisions.

Adding a metric to a Goal

Update progress manually or automatically. Choose to update progress directly on the goal every month or let it automatically roll up from sub-goal progress.

Track progress by adding a metric to your goal. Create a new metric, or select from an existing metric that was created previously.

• Creating a new metric: We recommend having specific metric names. For example, instead of creating a metric called ““Monthly Active Users (MAU)”, call it “Jira MAU” or “Confluence MAU”. This makes it easier to distinguish, and select the right metric.

• Selecting an existing metric: Choose this option if you want to track a metric over time. We recommend adding a metric to one active goal at a time, so that you can clearly see how your effort connects to outcomes.

Set a measurement. Pick from a % percentage, # number or $ currency to represent your metric.

Set starting and target values. Start with what the value was when you started, then define quantifiable, measurable targets that outline the impact you intend to achieve with this goal.

📅 Track goal progress in your monthly updates

You can update metric progress directly in your monthly goal updates. Simply enter the current value and ta-da, and see your progress % be updated automatically on the goal. No manual calculations needed.

👀 See how you’re tracking at a glance

Add Progress as a column to your goals directory and get a bird's eye view of how you’re tracking. Saved views are a great tool to ensure you’re focused on tracking the Goals you care about. Now you're ready for the next business review, leadership check-in, or whatever else comes your way.

🫶 Thank you!

We hope that metrics makes tracking goal progress towards your targets easier and clearer. This feature is currently rolling out so if you don’t see it today, it should come to your site soon.

Thank you to all our customers who provided feedback on early concepts and helped us iterate to what we have today.

As always, we would love to hear from you. Feel free to ask questions or leave feedback on this post. You can also click on the “Give feedback” button in Atlas and reach us there.

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

This is great! Thanks for sharing!!

[Stuart Capel - London]

This is looking really great, absolutely love it! Can't wait to try it out.

[James Lester]

Wow, this is amazing. Congrats!

[Paul Fox-Reeks]

Can't wait to try it, we are evaluating our Q4 goals this month and eager to introduce this into the process. 

Thanks!

[Kate]

Oh, this is such a winning addition for Atlas. Being able to visualise the metrics that measure your goal is so important for our leadership conversations and I can't wait to start utilising this

[Antonio Valle _G2_]

Great addition!!

Simple, but effective. next step will be to add many metrics to a single goal and allow formulas to compute the goal progress...

[Move Work Forward]

Nice. Thanks.

[Monty Bhatia]

Great to hear this has been implemented!

Question:  Is there a way to track an indicator at a project level?  We have individual projects that contribute to indicators, and should roll up the indicator across the projects.  This way we dont have to calculate this outside the system first.

Example:

Goal A -> Metric 1
Metric 1 is tracked in Project Y and Z.
When I look at the Metric at the project level I see my value
When I look at the Metric at the goal level it is a rollup of all projects tracking that metric

Or perhaps there is another recommended approach to support this?

THanks!

[Kate]

Just starting to put in some of our metrics to showcase this new function to users; is there any chance that you can/are looking to include a financial/cash value option that isn't linked directly to a particular currency? Our organisation measures in NZD, so none of the options really work for us

[Stephen_Lugton]

Thanks for sharing @Nicola Sun , I had added a custom field to show percent completion so now I get to go back and update progress of all the goals!

[VINCENT DUPONT]

Hello, and tank you

this is a nice improvement.

Could you add an integration with jira, like progress based on time (worklog) and progress based on number of tasks completed or tasks's status?

thank you very much

Vincent

[Dari Stolzoff]

How do I delete a malformed metric?

Also, is there a way to represent USD$475M in this shortened format (vs USD$475,000,000)?

[Nicola Sun]

Hey @Monty Bhatia 

Great to hear from you! Adding metrics to Projects is something we are eager to explore, I've added your feedback to our backlog.

[Monty Bhatia]

Hello team, another question on this; what is the suggested approach for tracking metrics over time?  ie.  if we need to report annually, is there a way to track the metric year over year?  Or would we need to create a new metric for each year.

Also, is there a way to pull this data into confluence databases?

[Chris Combe]

Can we have multiple metrics per goal. 

I understand in OKR language that a goal is the objective, the metric (weirdly called progress) is the key result but it seems only possible to have a single metric / key result rather than a normal 3-5 we typically see. 

I see sub-goal and a child OKR, rather than a key result but keen to understand thoughts on that. 

It is normal for have n number of OKRs in a medium to large org so keen to ensure there is an OKR hierarchy which would be Goal (acting as parent) > Sub-Goal (acting as child) > Sub-Goal etc..

Then at each *goal* level I should be able to have 3-5 metrics per goal, why can I only have 1?

[Nicola Sun]

Hi @Dari Stolzoff

To delete a metric, click the "..." menu next to your metric in the sidebar > Settings > Delete. 

There is no way to represent currency in the shortened format today, I have added your feedback to our backlog for consideration. 

[Nicola Sun]

Hi @Chris Combe ,

Thank you for your feedback. Adding multiple metrics to a goal is something we often get feedback on and want to explore, I've added your feedback to our backlog. 

Internally, we create sub-goal objects to represent key results. Metrics are attached to each object. I agree, there are ways we could improve how goals are displayed to better represent the hierarchy. Would you want to see the metrics as "child" objects as well in the goal directory? 

[Nicola Sun]

Hi @VINCENT DUPONT 

Thanks for your feedback, I've added to the backlog for consideration :) 

[Nicola Sun]

Hi @Monty Bhatia 

There isn't a view to track metric year over year today, I've added your feedback to our backlog. In the meantime, I would suggest using the same metric so the data points are stored on the same object. 

In terms of pulling data into Confluence databases - not yet. Would creating a saved view with the Goal, Progress and whichever additional column and then embedding this into a Confluence page work for you in the meantime? Thanks for your feedback as always :) 

[Nicola Sun]

Hi Kate, 

Thank you for your feedback, I've added your suggestion for a generic currency format into our backlog. In the meantime, would using the Number format work for your team? 

[Chris Combe]

@Nicola Sun thanks for replying

This is often a heavily opinionated and emotional space. I prefer to tackle with "the customer org decides and the tool supports the organisation how they want to configure".

MS Viva Goals solves it by allowing the customer to configure and decide - what and how they enable linking + they also have Jira integration too which seems a bit clunky requiring JQL etc.. but you can try their app as a trial to see what I mean - below are screenshots of the admin config. 

They enable the ability to decide / configure

- OKRs: Objectives have children

- Child items (nested under the OKR): n (usually 3-5) Key Results (call it metrics or measures etc..)

- Child OKRs (sub-goals): nested OKRs from above 

Then if you can link a work item to an OKR/Objective AND/OR a KR. The OKR experts I've spoken to encourage linking to the OKR/Objective rather than the KR itself so that people contributing to the outcome are focused on the overall outcomes, rather than a tick box of "I did my part, not our fault if the overall OKR failed..."

Then having a navigable hierarchy you can traverse "the golden thread" we we call it, from the organisations top level strategic items (which are often longer duration and change less frequently and owned by the CEO / Board etc..) can be traversed top to bottom or bottom to top. Giving teams context for "why are we doing this, how does our work contribute to the organisations strategy"

Also important which I think is possible is being able to link teams to OKRs (goals / sub-goals and metrics) so that it is clear which team is working on them. Emotions aside making it configurable such that teams can link to an OKR vs a single KR..

I'd rather the linkage of the work be connected with a team but I don't think people make Jira projects 1:1 with their teams so it often ends up being messy. This gets more complicated when you have projects that only cover top level things like cross-team planning (Jira Premium / Enterprise - Advanced Planning, Structure or BigPicture add-ins etc..)

[Nicola Sun]

Hey @Chris Combe

This is great feedback, thank you for taking the time to share this with our team. 

Totally agree with "the customer org decides and the tool supports the organisation how they want to configure" , and this is the direction we are striving to build towards. 

[Stefan Ehrlich]

For oure structured strategy development approach that's an awesome feature. Thanks for that! ;o)

Will there be in future the possibility to add more than metric?

Thanks again
Stefan 

[Kasper Storch]

Great feature!

Will it support a metric on reducing a number?
Eg.
Reduce support tickets for product A from X to Y

[Julia _ 55 Degrees]

This is great, but we often have more than one metric per goal. Can we only attach one metric?