Aligning OKR for agile teams in Jira

Owned by Derya Özdemir
Feb 16, 2024
2 min read

Aligning OKR means unifying your company at every level and tying daily activities with the company’s vision. Everyone can then work together on the same business objectives, consistently.

There are three ways to align OKR: top-down, bottom-up, and bi-directional.

1. Top-Down OKR Alignment

This is a traditional approach where high-level OKRs cascade downwards to departments, teams, and individuals. This style is suitable in certain situations: newly established company, large company, team members are unclear about company goals, crisis management.

Pros of Top-Down OKR Alignment

Cons of Top-Down OKR Alignment

Pros of Top-Down OKR Alignment

Cons of Top-Down OKR Alignment

  • Goals are properly aligned with the company’s vision and mission

  • Most employees are familiar with this style

  • Can be authoritative

  • Employees feel disconnected

2. Bottom-Up OKR Alignment

This is when employees come up with goals to steer the organization. It’s perfect in a small company or when employees are absolutely clear about the company’s growth direction.

Pros of Bottom-Up OKR Alignment

Cons of Bottom-Up OKR Alignment

Pros of Bottom-Up OKR Alignment

Cons of Bottom-Up OKR Alignment

  • Encourage employees’ commitment

  • Goals set are realistic

  • Goals set may not be challenging and ambitious

  • Goals set may not be aligned with company vision and mission

3. Bi-Directional OKR Alignment

But the best way to align your company and teams using OKRs is through a mixture of both top-down and bottom-up OKR alignment. This means that management comes up with strategic OKRs. Teams then define tactical OKRs that can contribute to those company objectives.

When teams – who are the experts in their respective domains – understand the company’s strategic direction, they’ll be empowered to support them with realistic goals and action plans.

Afterward, link the objectives from different teams and levels for strategic goal coordination.

Here’s an example of a bi-directional OKR alignment for a SaaS vendor:

CEO

  • Our strategic OKR is to build a software that customers love. How can each department help?

Dev Department Manager

Great! Our tactical OKR is to increase the NPS score from 7.5 to 8 by:

 

  • developing 10 new features

Customer Success Department Manager

Awesome! My team can help to reduce customer response time < 24 hours by:

 

  • deploying a self-serving product knowledge base

These managers will then collaborate with their team members to create action plans that can successfully accomplish those goals.

The key to proper OKR alignment is transparency, where everyone can see how they contribute to the company goals. Simple yet comprehensive Jira OKR management tools like OKR for Jira allow employees to clearly see how company objectives break down into team objectives and the status of each action plan or Jira issue.

To further align goals into daily tasks, the Jira OKR plugin shows how each Jira issue affects the Key Results and Objectives.