Updates in both goals and projects?

[Miguel Guerrero]

Hi, 

We are trying to use Atlas for OKRs (using Goals) and would like to know what advantages would be for us to use projects.

We have company Objectives and Key Results. Inherited from the KRs, we want to set up department Objectives and their respective KRs, so there is a 4-level system using Goals. Since we're interested in the outcomes, we first think Goals would be enough; however projects have these nice tabs for Learning/Risks/Decisions. 

If we use Atlas with Goals and Projects, would we need to write updates on both, the projects and on the objectives/key results, right? 

Would it be better for us to just use 'Goals' and not 'Projects'? 

Your thoughts and contributions are greatly appreciated!

Miguel

[Ivan Ferreira]

Hello @Miguel Guerrero. I think that Goals and Projects have different purposes and update/review cycles. You could have multiple projects impacting a goal, and you can have project specific metrics and goal specific metrics, that could be different. You could have project responsible, and different goal responsible. Also, you might have different stakeholders for projects and goals (tactical stakeholders vs strategic stakeholders).

So I think that you should use and update both of them, one for short term milestones (projects) and other for mid/long term milestones (goals).

Remember that you can link an Atlas project with an Epic, and an Epic with an Atlas goal.

This would bring alignment complete aligment in your organization.

[Miguel Guerrero]

Thank you Ivan for the quick response!

We are a team of less than eight members, so those responsible for goals are almost 100% the same as the project accountable. I want to avoid members using projects to update their achievements and other members using goals to do the same.

Since our OKRs are quarterly-based, and from your experience, would it be better to have projects stretched longer than goals and change the goals within the same project once the quarterly milestones are reached?

What are your thoughts on that?

[Rachel Lin]

Great response Ivan! 

To add to this, the way we see Projects & Goals interacting is that Goals represent the outcomes you are working towards, usually set on a quarterly basis and need some kind of progress checkin monthly. 

Projects are the actual work being done to contribute to those goals. These get updated weekly because they are being worked on day to day and would change enough week to week to warrant an update. 

An example might be, your goal for the quarter is to Increase CSAT by 10 points. The projects you could then be working on to do that are "Refresh the user experience of the core experience" or "Set up a customer success program". 

In Atlas, we believe that all teams have goals to achieve, but leaders and teams will only truly understand how to hit their goals if they have insight into the work that's happening underneath, that contributes to their goals. 

In your case, as your team is small, perhaps you are already able to know what work is happening and you can easily catch up via face to face chats. Goals could be all you need right now (and we intend to add things like risks, learnings and decisions to goals in the future). But you can see that as an org scales and becomes more complex, it is harder to stay on top of the work happening around you and that's where Projects become critical.