What are success measures and key results?

In Atlassian Goals app, success measure is the general term for any outcome-based metric tied to a goal. The term key result is a specific type of success measure, most often used in the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework.

While using Goals, you might see different terms—success measure, key result, or key performance indicator (KPI)—depending on your organization’s settings or preferred framework. In practice, they all serve the same purpose: to define and track the outcomes that show progress toward your goal.

Goals and success measures are default labels. An organization admin can rename these labels, so you may see different terminology in your app.

Add success measures to a goal

Use key results to describe what success looks like for each goal.

1. Open Goals in your Atlassian cloud site.
2. Find and select the goal you want to update.
3. Select the Overview tab.
4. Under Key results, select Create then follow the steps.

5. Enter a clear, outcome‑focused name. For example: “Customers find answers faster in self‑service channels”.
6. (Optional) Add a short description to explain the intent or context.
7. Select Create.

Repeat these steps to add more key results to the same goal.

推奨事項

• Aim for one to three success measures per goal. Too many can make it hard to focus and report. Note that goals have a maximum of 20 success measures.

• Avoid success measures that are just task lists (for example, “Launch new help center”). Instead, describe the change you want to see. For example: “Launch new help center to reduce the number of support calls”.

Add metrics to a success measure

Before success measures were introduced, goals linked directly with metrics but only in a 1:1 connection. Now that metrics have a 1:1 connection with success measures, you can now link goals to multiple metrics through its success measures.

1. Open Goals, then select the goal you want to update.
2. Select the Success measure you want to add metrics to.
3. Select Add metric then follow the steps.

4. Give the metric a specific, measurable name.

• For example: “Increase help center article usage from 40% to 60% of total support visits by end of Q2”.

5. Select Create.
6. Repeat to add additional metrics to the same success measure.

Add an update to the success measure

Once you’ve set up your success measures and metrics, you can start tracking the progress by posting an update. Posting an update on your success measure works similarly to goals.

1. Open Goals, then search for the goal or success measure you want to update.

2. From the success measure screen, select the Updates tab.
3. Select Post your update then fill in the details:

1. What is the current status?

2. When will it be done?

3. Progress

4. Select Post update.

This update will then appear when you go back and select the Overview tab.