Agile Tools just made a leap forward. A new version (2023.3) is now available, bringing one of the most anticipated features - KPIs and Health Metrics.
A bridge between two worlds
Having a clear dictionary and a model of connected concepts greatly increases your chances of the desired outcome when implementing goal and performance management systems in your company.
Agile Tools is offering you one such model. If it resonates with you, then you will not have to spend time configuring any generic business intelligence tools or even hire expensive consultants to do that for you.
The dashed line represents a "border" between two worlds: KPIs and OKRs. Often, there is confusion on how to use them together and questions - if those two worlds are even compatible.
The classic world of KPIs
Up until recent years, the predominant technique to make dashboards with all kinds of visually appealing and more or less informative charts was the use of Key Performace Indicators. The vocabulary to describe the charts and the data that drives them varies significantly from company to company.
There are an infinite number of Metrics. Some interest us as a company, and we want to monitor their values. They represent our company's health, so we call them Health Metrics.
Now, some of those are even more important. We hand-pick a few out of dozens or even hundreds of Health Metrics. Those are known as KPIs. So, in a particular period, we have a subset of Health Metrics promoted to Key Performance Indicators.
When we, for some reason, lose interest in some high-priority metrics (KPIs), we demote them to Health Metric or even outright abandon them.
Key Performance Indicators in Agile Tools
As of version 2023.3, you can create, edit and monitor KPIs in Agile Tools. Every KPI is created from the Metric Template from the Library. You can create your own Metric Templates, of course.
We help you create a KPI with a wizard, just like you are used to for creating Objectives and Key Results.
Health Metrics in Agile Tools
Health Metrics are also created from Metric Templates and require fewer steps to create, as you don't have to provide the target value, the direction (increase, decrease), the end date, and the person accountable.
The image below shows two Health Metrics in the Table View. Remember, every page in Agile Tools can be configured, some more, some less.
The progressive world of OKRs
OKR framework is designed with a different purpose. OKRs bring context to numbers. Objectives should be inspirational in nature and should include a business reason why to have them right now.
There is a comprehensive list of differences between Health Metrics, KPIs, and Key Results.
KPIs and Health Metrics from the OKRs
We encourage creating Key Results based on Metrics. When you do that, not only are you using them as they were designed, but you will gain another benefit that Agile Tools offer - the dashboards for KPIs and Health Metrics will "become alive" just by using OKRs. You will have different views on the same set of data—one from the perspective of OKRs and two additional, as KPIs and Health Metrics.
Let me show you how - schedule a demo.
What is coming next?
There is a lot more planned and already designed for the KPIs and Health Metrics in the future, but for the next release, we would like to go back to some of the earliest features and make them better. Thank you for the feedback!
The Goal (OKR) detail page will get content in the expanded Key Result panels. We will also experiment with another version of the Check-in, a non-wizard version right there in the expanded panels.
You will also get an enhanced version of the Goals Table View with the option to also see the accompanying Key Results, like an overview.
There is a public roadmap available and also a feature request page.