What to expect
In the Align Phase, you will learn more about your organization’s performance and impediments during the alignment phase of the OKR cycle. You may see at a glance which OKRs need more contribution to enable successful strategy execution. Thereby you get an impression of the current status of alignment within your organization and an overview of planned cross-functional teamwork.
Why use it
With this overview, you will understand how the organization is interacting and if work is done in cross-functional teamwork. You will get a better overview of whether the teams are working towards common goals (e.g. the organizational OKRs) or bringing their own independent projects forward. Having insights into which teams are well aligned - collaborating, being supported, and contributing - and which are not is crucial to support and create a well-aligned company overall.
When to use
As a Program Lead or Coach, you may start using the Align Phase approximately two weeks after the start of the drafting phase. Remember that this should happen at least 2 weeks before the start of the new cycle. Have a look at this section of the report at least once per week to check that the organizational OKRs get enough contribution and that there are no disconnected OKRs not contributing to any strategy in the whole organization.
This section can be filtered by cycle, team name, 3 hierarchy levels, labels and/or coaches. You can click on any metric to get a detailed view of the teams or OKRs that do not meet the displayed parameter. The color coding is based on the recommended value the organization should have based on best practices. When you hover over the number, you will see the legend for the color coding of each metric. Once a metric is in the orange or red range, a speech bubble will pop up with a recommendation.
The information button "i" explains in detail how each metric is being calculated:
Alignment Score & underneath parameters:
- OKRs aligned: From all team OKRs, the total number of team OKRs are contributing to at least one other OKR.
- Team OKRs contributing to the organization: From all team OKRs, the total number of team OKRs are contributing to the organization directly or indirectly up to 2 levels.
- Teams collaborating: From all the teams with OKRs, the total number of teams with at least one stakeholder from another team/team member for their own OKR.
Further Alignment Details:
- OKRs vertically aligned: From all team OKRs, the total number of OKRs aligned vertically.
- OKRs horizontally aligned: From all team OKRs, the total number of OKRs aligned horizontally.
- Team OKRs getting support: From total team OKRs, total team OKRs getting support.
- Accepted contribution request: From the total contribution request sent, the total number of contributions got acceptance.
Flexibility with Align Score Parameters:
We have introduced greater flexibility with the parameters of the scores, allowing for customised and tailored reporting based on specific requirements. For Align phase, user now has the flexibility to exclude certain metric from the calculation of Average Align Score.
Team Distribution:
This overview shows you a treemap with all teams from the first two hierarchy levels and the corresponding Alignment Score. So you can see at a glance which teams need additional support (red or orange). You can also click on a specific team to see the teams below it and their Alignment Score.