OKR Overview board
This page is about OKR for Jira Cloud. Using Data Center? Click here.
The OKR Overview board provides a holistic view of your company's Objectives and Key Results in a hierarchical structure, allowing you to see how smaller goals contribute to larger ones. This flexible hierarchy allows for nested levels, accommodating the unique structure of your company's OKRs, regardless of its size.
Using the OKR Overview in everyday work:
The OKR Overview board is a versatile tool for:
Monitoring progress on objectives and their current statuses. This makes it a perfect view to share during OKR review meetings on each level and planning sessions of the individual teams.
Starting to plan your team's work. The OKR Overview board can help you choose the right things to focus on.
1. Configure the View
OKRs can be filtered and displayed based on specific periods, which you can select from the selector above the OKRs list. This allows you to view all OKRs aligning with the chosen timeframe. You can switch between current, past, or future periods by selecting from predefined or custom ones. You can select only one period at a time. Moreover, by utilizing the search bar, as described in detail below, you can apply various filters to the OKR Overview. Then, you can save your filter configurations for future use.
Saved Views
This feature allows you to store specific OKR setups for quick access without applying all changes, such as filters or column widths. You can create customized views for different teams or company levels, helping you identify relevant OKRs and track updates efficiently. All views are visible and editable to everyone on your Jira instance.
Every time you change the OKR Overview table, you can save it as a new view. The saved view appears in a dropdown at the top of the screen.
Changes made to a view with a custom setup applied can be saved or discarded. Saving the view will permanently update the existing setup with your modifications.
Alternatively, choose "Save as new view" to create a separate view with your changes, leaving the original setup intact. Opting to not save will revert the view to its original state when you reopen it.
You can also share the view with others by clicking Share view. This will give you a link that you can share with others. When the receiver opens the link, your filters, filtering options, sorting, and columns will be applied to their view.
To edit the saved view names, go to Settings > Saved views. All the views saved on your instance are listed there. You can edit and delete them as you wish.
2. Search and Filter OKRs
To filter your OKR Overview based on specific criteria, utilize the column filters located under each column name. Simply click the filter symbol in the corresponding field, and you will be presented with filter options specific to that column. Once applied, the chosen options will be displayed in the field below the column header.
Table Options
By default, the system will display OKRs that match the currently applied filters along with a higher level of hierarchy above them. For example, if you are searching for OKRs with an "Off track" status and only one Key Result (KR) has this status, both the matching KR and its associated Objective will be shown.
To narrow down the results and display only the filtered items, or to show both higher- and lower-level items related to the filtering results, click the "Filtering options" tab. This opens a side panel with options to show/hide lower and higher-level items.
Expand all/Collapse all – This feature allows you to expand or collapse all entries with just one click.
Column layout – You can select the columns (OKRs, Period, Weight, etc.) you want to have on the board and drag and drop them to change the order.
Filtering options – Fine-tune your perspective using the advanced filtering options:
Display all lower-level OKRs matching applied filters
Display all higher-level OKRs matching applied filter
Display the issues connected to the OKRs matching applied filters. To utilize this, you need to enable the feature in Settings > General Settings.
Export – This allows you to export the OKRs on the selected/configured view. To learn more, refer to this documentation.
3. Create Hierarchical OKRs
The process of creating hierarchical OKRs is straightforward and can be adapted to different stages of planning. Typically, it begins with setting top-level OKRs and then adding sub-objectives and KRs. Here is an example of an OKR hierarchy:
Owner of company E. has set 3 OKRs for the company for the next quarter.
Company E. consists of the tech department, operations department, and business department.
Each department has its own OKRs that contribute to the company's OKRs.
Each of the department consists of 2-4 teams that have their own goals that contribute to the department-level OKRs.
People in the business department decided to have personal goals (that contribute to the team-level OKRs) as well, while members of tech and operations were skeptical and decided not to introduce them.
Here are the steps on how to create this structure in OKRs for Jira:
Create the top-level OKRs first.
Create KRs for them if there are metrics that are not dependent on the lower goals.
There are three ways to add sub-objectives and KRs:
Option A: Add sub-objectives and KRs directly underneath the created objective in one go on the Tree view page.
Option B: Add sub-objectives and key results later on, from the OKR Overview. Simply hover over a top-level objective and click on the three-dot menu. "Add sub-objective" and "Add key result" are one of the options available.
Option C: Open each objective's page. Scroll down to “Alignment” and click the three-dot menu and create sub-objectives and add KRs for this level. Repeat the process level by level until you get the hierarchy you need.
If you wish to change the higher-level objective later, you can do it in each objective's info area.
If you want to add an objective that fits in the created structure later, ensure you’re selecting the appropriate higher-level objective when creating it.
4. Objective/Sub-Objective/Key Result Options
When hovering over an item on the board, a three-dot icon will appear on the right side of the screen. All the Objectives will have More actions visible all the time, while KRs will have those available on hovers. Clicking on this icon will trigger the More actions menu to appear. Through this menu, you can post updates, add key results, clone objects, and more.