Agile Tools is making great progress. A new version (2023.2) is now available, bringing some enhancements to the existing features.
Near the end of the OKR cycle, the indispensable event is a team meeting where we go over our goals, score the Key Results, and, most importantly, write the learning notes.
First, you move the Goal to a "completed" state if it is not already. The Goal also goes from "active" to "completed" automatically when the OKR period is over.
You can start your review process (retrospective) by hitting the REVIEW button available for goals in a completed state.
In the review overlay, you can see the Key Results with the trend line charts and the notes taken at your regular Check-in events during the OKR period.
The Goal (OKR) review notes you enter here will be visible on the Goal detail page.
Connecting daily work and Key Results
Key Results are often misused in a way that they are created as a list of tasks. Agile Tools goes to great lengths to discourage such behavior by offering Key Result creation wizards leading you to create ones based on a metric.
Tasks belong to one layer below the OKRs. The actions are our daily work that supports Key Results. In Agile Tools, the umbrella term for tasks, features, user stories, epics, subtasks, etc., is Value Items.
You can now create tasks that you should do to accomplish the Key results right on its detail page. It is also possible to configure whether Notes and Value Items are visible or not.
It also goes in the opposite direction - connect Key Results from the Value Item detail page. You can find this feature in the Key Results tab at the bottom.
So, if you are working on some Task and know it helps achieve some Key Result, you can find it and connect it from here.
Other enhancements
Goal cloning is a great time-saving feature. Often OKRs are "copied over" to the next period and modified. Some Key Results might be achieved, some will have different targets and scoring, and some will be completely new.
Value Unit type added to some user interface elements. Because the term Value Unit is new, it is beneficial from the user experience perspective to be utilized as friendly as possible.
Value Item comments are now available in the first tab on the Value Item detail page.
What is coming next?
The Key Performance Indicators and Health Metrics module is a significant feature coming in the next release.
KPIs and Health Metrics are close relatives to OKRs, and with this coming feature, the bridge between those two "worlds" will be presented.
If you will create Key Results based on metrics, some of your performance pages will be automatically populated.
Stay tuned if you are curious.
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