How to add and manage Objectives to your strategy

Your strategy is executed through a series of objectives. Each objective may span across several months/years. Here’s how you can add an objective to the strategy.

How to add Objectives

1. Hover over the Objective label and you’ll see a “+” symbol next to it. Clicking on it will open the window that looks like what’s shown in Figure 6.
2. Give a name to the objective using the Title text box. The best practice is to add a SMART objective. Your goal must have a north star metric that can be measured and tracked.
3. You can also assign an Owner to this goal by keying in their name:
   1. To remove an owner you might have added by mistake or that is created as default, click the “x” mark to the left of the owner’s name.
   2. To assign a new owner, start keying in their name:
      1. A list that matches the name is shown.
      2. Select the user who owns this objective from the list to add them as the owner for this objective.
   3. By Clicking the “+” symbol, on the top right, you can add more objectives to your strategy. This dialogue allows you to quickly add objectives to your strategy which you can modify later using the Edit Objectives option.

Figure 6: Adding an Objective

Once you are done with all the details, click on the Save button to save the details. This will save the objective and you can see it listed as in Figure 7

Figure 7: Saved Objective

Notice the green bar towards the extreme right side of the objective. That is a progress indicator. You can add Initiatives and Roadmap items to each objective. Each roadmap item is linked to a feature or an epic. As your teams make progress on these features and epics, it will automatically be tracked here.

How to edit an objective

You can change the details of the objective anytime during its execution. It’s not uncommon to add new objectives to the strategy or change the direction of strategy by setting new goals. Sometimes it can also be the case that you may want to assign the ownership of an objective to someone different in the team. All these are scenarios which require you to edit an objective.

To edit an objective:

1. Click on the Settings icon on the left side of the objective name. Prakya would show a pop up which has two options, “Edit” and “Delete”.
2. Click on the Edit option and the Edit Objective dialogue as in Figure 8 opens with the additional options of Description and Mode.
3. Add a meaningful description. This description can be a long one, if needed. The rich text editing features allow you to create a beautiful looking text that can effectively communicate your objective.
4. Click on the “Save” button to save the changes. If you decide you don’t want the changes you made, click on the “Cancel” button.
   Figure 8: Edit Objective Dialogue

Using the Full Screen Mode

If you hover the mouse cursor over the objective bar, towards the far right next to the green bar, you’ll see two icons. The four arrowed icon will open up the objective in full screen mode as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Full Screen Mode

This mode is helpful when you have multiple objectives and would like to work with one of them and add or edit the details linked to the objective.

How to Expand and Collapse an objective

If you hover the mouse cursor over the objective bar, towards the far right next to the green bar, you’ll see two icons. The downward pointing icon will expand the objective to show Initiatives as see in Figure 10.

This allows you to quickly view the initiatives that are a part of the objective and the time frame through which those initiatives have been planned. Hovering over the label “Initiative” on the top left of the expanded view, will show a “+” symbol. Clicking on that will allow you to add more initiatives to the objective. This is covered in more detail in the next section

How to delete an Objective

1. Click on the Delete icon on the left side of the objective name. It will open up a pop up which has two options, “Edit” and “Delete”.
2. Click on the Delete option. It will pop a dialog as show in Figure 11.
3. Click on Yes to delete the objective. Deleting an objective will remove all the initiative, roadmap items and associated links to features and epics. This change cannot be undone. So before you click on yes, give it a good deal of thought.
4. Click on the No button to keep the objective as it is.