What is the OKR Roadmap?
The OKR Roadmap in Kendis is a powerful visualization tool that provides a dynamic, long-term view of your strategic plan. Unlike the detailed tables in the Objectives view, the roadmap presents your Objectives and Key Results on a timeline, allowing you to see your organizational goals and their progress over quarters or years at a glance.
The roadmap is a central hub for senior leadership, portfolio managers, and other stakeholders to understand the strategic direction, track progress, and ensure alignment across the entire organization.
The Benefits of Using the OKR Roadmap
The OKR Roadmap provides several key benefits for different stakeholders:
Stakeholder | Key Benefit |
For Leadership & Portfolio Managers | Provides an at-a-clance, high-level view of the entire strategic plan. It helps them see if the organization is on track to meet its long-term goals and enables them to identify and address bottlenecks proactively. |
For Cross-Departmental Collaboration | By visualizing objectives from different collections (departments, teams, etc.) on a single timeline, the roadmap breaks down silos and highlights dependencies, encouraging collaboration. |
For ARTs & Teams | Provides clarity on how their work (Objectives and Key Results) contributes to the bigger picture. This transparency fosters a sense of purpose and alignment across the organization. |
For Strategic Planning | By providing a long-term view of your strategic goals, the roadmap helps in planning and forecasting. You can easily identify potential conflicts or areas of risk and make adjustments to your plan. |
For Stakeholder Communication | The roadmap serves as a powerful tool for communicating the strategic vision to stakeholders, as it clearly and visually shows where the organization is headed and how it plans to get there. |
Detailed Navigation and How-To
This guide will show you how to navigate to and use the OKR Roadmap.
I. Starting Point: Accessing the Roadmap
The OKR Roadmap is a dedicated view accessible from the detailed page of a specific Strategic Theme.
Navigate to the Main Menu: From any board in Kendis, locate the left-hand navigation panel.
Access the OKR Section: Click the OKRs icon. This will take you to the Strategic Themes list view.
Select a Strategic Theme: Click on the title of the specific Strategic Theme you want to view on the roadmap from the main list. This will open the detailed view for that theme.
Open the Roadmap: Within the detailed view, click the OKR Roadmap button. This will display the horizontal timeline for the selected Strategic Theme.
II. Understanding the Roadmap View
The OKR Roadmap is organized around a horizontal timeline and vertical groupings.
Timeline and Time Periods: The top of the roadmap displays the timeline. You can adjust the time horizon to view a specific year, half, or quarter.
Objective Groups: The left-hand side lists your Objective Groups (e.g., Milestones, Operations, IT, Architects). These groups act as swimlanes, organizing the objectives by their owning collection or a custom group.
Milestones: The Milestones row at the top allows you to visualize and place key dates or events on the roadmap.
Objectives and Key Result Bars: By default, the roadmap shows objectives as color-coded bars on the timeline. These bars visually represent the planned duration of each objective. When you toggle the Key Results button at the top, the view dynamically changes to show the corresponding Key Results nested directly under their parent objective. This view is essential for detailed planning, as it allows you to see the planned work for the Key Results in the context of their collections. The color of the bar represents the objective's status, while a shaded line over the bar helps differentiate it from a Key Result.
Progress and Status: The progress of each objective is visible directly on the bar. The green progress bar and percentage provide an at-a-glance health check. The color of the bar itself corresponds to the objective's status, making it easy to see which goals are on track.
III. Interacting with the Roadmap
The OKR Roadmap is highly interactive and allows for a dynamic experience.
Hover for Details: When you hover over an objective bar, a pop-up window appears with more details about the objective, including its progress, owner, and time period.
Drag and Drop: The objective bars on the roadmap are highly interactive. You can easily adjust them to reflect changes in your plan. You can do this by:
Moving the entire bar: Click and drag an objective bar to change its start and end dates, which will move the objective to a new position on the timeline.
Extending the duration: Click and drag either end of the objective bar to extend or shorten its duration.
Proposing new dates: As you drag, a pop-up will show you the new start and end dates. Releasing the mouse button will save these changes and update the objective's dates accordingly.
Filtering and Customization: You can use the various filters at the top of the page (e.g., Time Period, Responsible, Collection Associations, and Statuses) to create a customized view. The Key Results and FIT toggles are also powerful tools for customizing what you see.
Custom Timeframe and Navigation: From the top-right corner of the roadmap, click the Custom button. This opens a dropdown where you can select a specific time frame, such as Year 2025 or a specific quarter like Q1-25. Once a time frame is selected, the roadmap will automatically adjust to show only the selected period. You can then use the navigation arrows on either side of the Custom dropdown to move to the previous or next time period (e.g., from Q1-25 to Q2-25).
IV. Understanding the FIT Button
The FIT button is a powerful tool for quickly reorienting your view. When selected, it automatically adjusts the roadmap's zoom level to fit all visible objectives and their timelines into a single view. This is particularly useful in two scenarios:
Initial Misalignment: When objectives are first created, they may have dates that are far outside the current view. Clicking FIT will immediately zoom out to show you the entire time span of your open objectives, so you don't have to manually scroll and zoom.
High-Level Overview: When multiple objective groups are expanded, the roadmap can become cluttered. The FIT button will zoom out to provide a high-level overview of all the objectives within the opened groups, ensuring all are visible at once.
V. Creating and Managing Milestones
Milestones are key to visualizing important events or phases on your strategic roadmap. They are a valuable tool for tracking key dates and project phases.
Open the Milestone Creation Modal: On the OKR Roadmap view, hover over the Milestones row on the left-hand side and click the three dots icon. A pop-up menu will appear with the options to Add New Milestone or Add Existing. Click Add New Milestone.
Choose Milestone Type: In the creation modal, you can select one of two types from the Type dropdown menu:
Milestone: For a single, specific date (e.g., a product launch or a project go-live date).
Phase: For a period of time with a defined start and end date (e.g., a Discovery Phase or a Beta Period).
Fill out Details and Save: The process for filling out the details and saving a new milestone is the same for both Milestone and Phase types, but with a key difference in the date fields:
Milestone Type: Requires a single Milestone Date.
Phase Type: Requires both a Start Date and an End Date.
For both types, you will also fill in the Title, Description, Color, and Responsible fields. Once you have filled out the details, click the green Save button at the top right of the modal.
Link Items: Once the milestone is saved, its details page will open. From here, you can link items to the milestone for tracking. Click on the Linked Items tab.
Add Items to Link: Click the + Link Items button. You can then search and select items from any collection to link to the milestone, providing better visibility and tracking of how work contributes to key dates.
VI. Creating Cross-Board Relationships
The Relations tab within the milestone modal allows you to make a milestone or phase visible on other collections or Program Boards. This is a crucial feature for communicating key dates and events across different teams and departments.
Open the Milestone Details: Click on the title of a milestone or phase to open its details modal.
Access the Relations Tab: In the modal, click on the Relations tab on the left-hand side.
Associate a Relationship: Click on the Create Relationship button. A pop-up window will appear.
Choose a Destination: In the "Associate Milestone With" modal, you can choose to associate the milestone with another Collection or Program Board.
Select the Target: From the dropdown menus, select the specific collection or program board you want the milestone to appear on.
Save: Click the Save button in the pop-up to finalize the relationship. The milestone will now be visible on the selected board, creating a shared point of reference for all teams involved.
VII. Managing Objective Groups and Quick Actions
Within the OKR Roadmap, you can interact with Objective Groups in several ways without leaving the main view, which streamlines your workflow. When you hover over an Objective Group, a set of quick action icons appears, and a right-click menu offers additional options.
Hover Actions:
Edit: The Edit icon (a pencil) opens a modal to edit the group's title and other details.
Add: The Add icon (a plus sign) opens a Create New Objective modal, allowing you to quickly add a new objective to this specific group. You will fill in the objective title, time period, and save it.
Show Progress: The Show Progress icon (a bar chart) toggles the progress bar visibility for the group.
Delete: The Delete icon (a trash can) removes the entire objective group and all of its associated objectives.
Right-Click Menu:
Group Progress: This is a shortcut to view the progress analytics for all objectives within this group.
Delete Objective Group: A secondary way to remove the entire group and its contents from the roadmap.
These quick actions provide a fast and efficient way to manage your objectives directly from the roadmap view, ensuring you can keep your plan updated with minimal effort.
VIII. Search, Navigation, and Presentation Mode
The OKR Roadmap view also includes powerful tools at the top to help you find information, navigate the interface, and share your view with others.
Search: The Search bar on the top right allows you to quickly find specific objectives or key results by entering keywords. Within the search bar, you'll also find several filters to refine your search. These include:
Responsible
Collection Associations
Statuses
Navigation: The small Back arrow on the top left takes you back to the list of objectives under the Strategic Theme.
Presentation Mode: The Presentation Mode icon is a full-screen toggle that hides browser tabs and other distractions, providing a clean view for presentations or reviews. To exit this mode, simply click the icon again.