5 Lessons for Automating OKRs Progress using Aha

3 min readDec 6, 2022

I lead the OKRs program for the Sophos Technology Group.

OKRs success relies on setting the right goals and the ability to check how well you are doing against those goals.

I have been experimenting with how to automate OKRs progress consistently across all the departments and how to do it with minimal overhead.

Today, I will share 5 lessons I learned after using the Aha! Software.

What are OKRs?

OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. It is a goal-setting system that you can use to set challenging, ambitious goals with measurable results.

Objectives (The “What”) — An objective is what you want to do.
Key Results (The “How”) — A key result is a measurable outcome required to achieve an objective.

You can create OKRs for all levels of your organization and connect them:

Company > Division > Department > Team > Individual

About Aha!

Aha is a product development software. It can help you set strategy, prioritize work, and create visual roadmaps.

Note: The screenshots I have included in the lessons are from the Aha demo workspace.

Lesson # 1

All Aha workspaces have the same core functionality. You can create as many workspaces as you need and set up the hierarchy that fits your organization.

Lesson # 2

You can go into your company workspace and create:

A goal for each objective
An initiative for each key result & link it to the goal

For each goal, you can set the progress to be calculated from initiatives.

Lesson # 3

You can go into each division workspace and do the same.

You can use the roll-up feature to link the division-level initiatives to contribute to the company-level initiatives.

You can keep doing this for all levels of your organization.

Lesson # 4

In each department workspace, you can create releases and link them to the department-level initiatives.

For each department-level initiative, you can calculate progress from releases.

Next, you can create features, link them to releases, and integrate them with Jira.

Lesson # 5

Once you create goals, initiatives, releases, and features, and link everything for all levels of your organization, you can generate a hierarchy report.

As you complete each item, progress will be automatically calculated and rolled up. You can see how well you are doing at each level of your organization all the way up to your company-level goals.