Create release objectives

When you plan a release, program, or sprint, you can use objectives to define and track high-level goals.

Overview

Objectives are high-level goals that you can define per release, milestone, sprint, program, and team. Objectives are general goals, such as avoiding critical defects or planning correctly.

When using SAFe methodology, objectives can be used to help define your business objectives, track business value, and assess your achievement score.

You can define objectives at the start of your cycle, and then use them as part of your retrospective to compare actual accomplishments with your original objectives.

Note: You can define objectives separately for each combination of release and milestone, sprint, program, and team, so release objectives are different than release and sprint objectives.

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Enable objectives - admin tasks

To enable objectives, the administrator should perform the following tasks:

Step Details
Create UDFs

Create one or more user-defined-fields (UDFs) for the Objectives entity.

These UDFs define which field types will be displayed, such as memo fields or values that hold achievement scores.

You can also create an optional field to assign a business value to an objective.
Define rules

Define business rules, for example to make the objective description mandatory.

Enable objectives for a workspace

In the Backlog and Team Backlog modules, the Objectives button is not displayed by default.

To enable working with objectives:

  1. In Settings > Spaces, select the workspace where you want to enable objectives.

  2. On the Entities tab, select Objectives.

  3. On the Fields tab, click Field . Provide an appropriate name and label for the objectives field.

  4. Click Add to add the UDF to the Objectives entity.

  5. Add the UDF to the Objectives form using the Forms tab. If you cannot edit the form, duplicate the form, and then add the UDF. For details, see Design forms.

Tip: You can create rules, fields, and forms for the Objectives entity, similar to other entities in ALM Octane.

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Define objectives

You can define objectives per release, milestone, sprint, and team.

To define objectives:

  1. In the Backlog or Team Backlog module, select a release.

    You can also select a milestone, sprint, or program (in Backlog), but release is mandatory.

  2. In the upper right corner, click Objectives.

  3. Fill in your objectives in the fields created by your administrator.

  4. Click Add.

By default, the name of an objective is Objectives for release: sprint/program, but you can change this as needed.

You can assign a different set of objectives to each combination of release, program (in Backlog), sprint, and team, so you can have one objective for release x overall, and another for release x and sprint 1.

You can add comments and attachments to objectives. You cannot delete objectives, but you can edit them as needed.

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Track objectives progress

You can create custom widgets in the Dashboard to track progress on objectives over time.

For example, you can create one UDF for objectives, and another UDF to track each team's achievement score in each sprint. You can then create a widget to track these scores across releases using the Objectives entity, to see if your teams are meeting their goals consistently.

For details on the Dashboard, see Dashboard.

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See also: