Link OKRs to your Jira work items

We are delighted to announce that you can now link your Key Results to work items such as Stories or Epics from your project tracking tools. 🥳

Why is this important?

OKRs are not meant to be static, nor should they be considered in isolation. The day-to-day work done by the team should be linked with the organization goals as well.

Teams and individuals already use their tools of choice to update their progress. It is unfair to expect them to update KR status additionally.

Keeping this in mind, Axon now supports linking your KRs with work-items. As an when the work-item progress, the linked KR also progresses proportionally. With no additional input needed.

How do I use this?

You can link the KR with an work-item when you create the KR or at any later point. The short clip below shows one such example...

As you can see it takes a few seconds!

FAQs about Linking OKRs with Jira

What can I link with?

At this point you can link OKRs with JIRA tickets such as an Epic, Story, or Task. Sub-tasks are not supported. Support for work-items from other tools will be added shortly.

Note that the work-item should be in "open" state. Closed tickets will not appear in the list of tickets to link with.

How is the progress calculated?

If the linked ticket has children, then progress is tracked based on how many of the children are "completed" (or "resolved"). So if the ticket has 5 children and 2 of them are "completed", then the progress of the KR will be 40%.

If the ticket has no children, then the progress will be either 0% (if the ticket is still open) or 100% (after the ticket is closed).

This progress is then propagated up the OKR hierarchy.

Can I link an Objective as well?

No. Only the leaf-level KRs (that is KRs without any children) can be linked with a work-item.

Can I manually change the progress for a linked KR?

No. Once linked, the progress is calculated automatically based on the progress of the linked work-item.

It must be also be noted that when you link an existing KR, its current progress will be replaced with the work-item's calculated progress. Similarly if you unlink a KR, its calculated progress will be reset to 0, which can then be manually updated.

Can an Objective have a combination of linked and manually updated KRs?

Yes!

Can I link a KR with some Jira Metrics like no. of Open Defects?

At this point, no. We strongly recommend that you use KPIs and not OKRs for tracking things like Open Defects, Planning Efficiency, Cycle Time, Turnaround time, etc.

OKRs are expected to have a finite life, where these KPIs need to be continuously measured. Creating KRs for tracking these metrics and KPIs would require you keep OKRs up

Axon provides a rich suite of KPIs tracking at the Organization or Team level.

How do I know that a KR is linked?

A linked KR will have a small icon of the project tracker next to it. For example:

Linked OKR indication

Can I link multiple KRs with the same work-item?

Yes, Axon allows you to do that. However, it would mean that there are multiple KRs with the same end goal. This could imply some duplication in your goals, so perhaps you should take a closer look at how your OKRs are created.

I don't see the option to link a KR. What may be the problem?

To link a KR, you need to be the current owner of the KR or you should have the "OKR Admin" access. If neither is true, then the link option will not appear on the OKR Dashboard against the KR.