Overview

An Objective is a collection of Epics representing high-level company goals. They represent the outcomes you want to achieve from larger-scale work the business believes will have larger impact.

With Objectives, you can roll up work across multiple teams in a tactical way to track releases via Tactical Objectives, as well as track outcomes and impact using key results via Strategic Objectives.

Having another layer of hierarchy makes it easier to track higher-level progress, which makes it easier for Executives and stakeholders to zoom out or dig in to the details as needed. Teams and individuals are able to see across Shortcut what goals they are working towards, health can be tracked at both the project level on Epics and higher level on the Objective itself for deeper alignment.

Using Objectives Effectively

Keep your Objectives trimmed to just the outcomes that teams are actively working to impact in a given quarter to ensure focus. If the Objectives aren’t being worked on, then the various ways they communicate progress won’t change so it's best to move those to a "To Do" status, or close them out.

Similar to Epics, we want our Objectives to have concrete, achievable goals, such that they have a completion date and their progress elements remain meaningful.

If your Objective is time-based, such as “Q3 Projects”, it’s easy to know which Roadmap items (or outputs) will be worked on to try make impact on the desired outcome within that timeframe. Progress of individual Epics is balanced against the end of the Objective and Roadmap for that time horizon. This makes it easier to identify if work is on track, off track, or at risk to making impact on the desired outcome.

Using Objectives for OKRs

If your Objective is OKR-based, frame your Objective to ensure that the goal is clear and achievable. 

Two examples of an OKR-based, a more open-ended Objective that is still time-based to ensure it's actinoable could be “Increase user adoption by X% month-over-month” or “Increase user adoption by X%, by end of Q3”.

The first one doesn’t have a built-in reflection point, but is ongoing and more bite-sized in nature so it may be “In Progress” until the market shifts or business needs change. The second one encourages us to reflect on what’s worked and what hasn’t at the end of Q3 and set specific initiatives within that time horizon for the Roadmap. Both encourage the team to focus on outputs that will impact a set goal, reflect back on the health and progress, and track success over time. 

Both of these can work, though with more open-ended Objectives check in more often with Health updates to ensure the team is focused on moving work forward that is having meaningful short-term impact or if you need to pivot your strategies.