Use goal status to track objectives and key results

Goals are a flexible system to communicate how your teams are progressing toward achieving shared outcomes. You can define parent goals and sub-goals, assign owners for each, and link to contributing work.

Goal owners will receive an automated reminder to share a monthly update with stakeholders, encouraging visibility and feedback as work progresses.

Whether a goal is on or off track, owners receive a reminder to share a monthly update to encourage visibility and feedback as work progresses.

How to track goal status

There are two options to communicate a goal’s status: Simple status and Status and score. Only workspace admins can change the scoring method, and the setting they choose applies to all goals in a workspace.

Using the Simple status method

When writing their monthly update, Simple status lets owners choose between On track, At risk, or Off track to communicate how the goal is progressing against the target date. You can also mark a goal as Pending, Paused, or Completed 🎉 to communicate a change in the goal.

Using the Status and score method

With Status and score, owners will instead assign a score in their monthly update based on their current projection:

• 0.0-0.3 = Off track

• 0.4-0.6 = At risk

• 0.7-1.0 = On track

By adding a score to the status, owners can communicate the degree by which a goal is on track, off track, or at risk. For example, a 0.3 score might mean the goal is only slightly off track compared to a 0.0 score.

Using goals to track Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

When using the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework for goal-setting, you set an overarching goal (or Objective) and define the Key Results that show progress towards that Objective.

• Objectives are qualitative goals, usually set once a quarter. They’re commonly intended to be ambitious and aspirational, with a typical achievement score of 0.7 out of 1.

• Key Results are measurable targets or milestones necessary to achieve Objectives. There are typically 2 to 3 Key Results paired with an Objective.

With goals, you can model OKRs by creating parent goals with any number of sub-goals. You can set the parent goal as the Objective [O], and define the sub-goal as a Key Result [KR].

Best practices for communicating goal progress

Goals aren’t strictly a tool for OKRs, but they do help create a consistent communication loop to ensure everyone can connect the dots across teams, their apps, and their work.

​To improve cross-team alignment, a good way to start is by focusing on regularly communicating projects status. Ensuring teams work well together only happens when we’re communicating frequently and effectively. By starting with project communication, it becomes easier to apply that practice to goal-setting and helps everyone align on larger objectives and map their work to outcomes.

With an agile mindset, incremental improvements compound. Soon enough, quick wins can turn into big ones. Communicating regularly on how projects and goals are progressing is key to driving work forward.