How to Prove Your Progress in a PI Sync
TL;DR
Weekly PI Syncs work best when updates are evidence-based, not from anecdotal. When work in Jira is linked to measurable objectives and real-time status is visible, teams see momentum and risks early. Independent research shows that scattered information hides delays and consumes budget; evidence closes that gap.
Easy Agile Programs brings this into Jira. Teams create objectives, link every scheduled issue, and see concise progress bars and value scoring that make the impact clear. The result is faster, confident decisions, fewer update-chasing meetings, and customers see outcomes sooner.
Why tracking progress in Jira beats assumptions
It’s the first weekly PI Sync, and every team lead shares a confident “In Progress” update. By the second sync, a hidden dependency has derailed two of the teams, and leadership wonders how the story changed so quickly. Sound familiar?
PI Syncs work best when updates are anchored in evidence. When each team links issues to clear objectives and shares progress tracked where the work lives in Jira, leaders see momentum and emerging risks early. The conversation can focus on decisions rather than debate.
Research shows the cost of scattered information is real. Atlassian’s 2025 State of Teams reports that leaders and teams waste 25% of their time searching for information, a symptom of poor reporting and fragmented data. When information is hard to find, decisions are slow, and delivery dates slip.
When you connect work to measurable objectives, make real-time status visible, and map dependencies across the PI, you provide everyone with the picture they need to see the logical next step.
The Cost of Hidden Delays
In PMI’s 2020 Pulse of the Profession, organisations wasted 11.4 cents of every project dollar through poor performance. That’s real budget lost because problems stayed hidden until it was too late.
Fast forward to 2023, and Harvard Business Review found that while 89 percent of large companies have a digital or AI transformation underway, they’ve captured only 31 percent of the revenue lift they expected, largely because they can’t verify progress against the outcomes they promised.
The Standish Group paints an even starker picture: just 16 percent of IT projects finish on time, on budget, and on scope. The rest overspend, under‑deliver, or stall altogether.
Getting it wrong is expensive.
Data Beats Guesswork
Intuition absolutely has a place in innovation, but there are much better barometers for risk. Teams that look beyond the ship date and measure success in terms of business value and strategic alignment, as well as customer impact and quality, deliver much better results. PMI’s 2025 research shows teams with high “business acumen” (i.e., robust performance measurement) meet their business goals 83 percent of the time and fail only 8 percent of the time.
Simply put, when you can point to objective data, you make better decisions earlier and improve your chances of maintaining momentum.
Three Capabilities for Reliable Tracking in Jira
To reliably track work and progress on objectives across multiple teams, you need to be able to see those objectives, their status, and their dependencies clearly.
- Link every task to a clear goal
When work connects directly to objectives, teams know why a story matters and leaders can see which goals risk slipping. Tools like Easy Agile Programs let you create tangible objectives inside Jira and link every issue to them. This is the foundation for tracking delivery progress in Jira across teams. - Surface real‑time health signals
Use status pills, dependency maps, and filterable views to expose blockers as they emerge, not as they bite. When teams can spot problems early, they can rearrange sequencing to support each other and keep delivery moving. This is Jira progress tracking designed for teams of teams. - Maintain one source of truth
When progress lives where the work lives, everyone sees the same numbers. No tool‑switching or chasing status updates. Shared context cuts through noise and lets leaders focus support where it counts.
Plans Built for Shipping, Not Shelving
Easy Agile Programs embeds the capabilities you need to reliably track progress towards delivery. Objectives are visible, linked work is clear, dependencies are transparent, and status is current. That means teams can adjust early, before roadblocks cause delays.
Track progress on objectives with clarity
Objectives sit at the top of each increment with a concise progress bar that shows the percent complete and remaining work. Every scheduled Jira issue can be linked to an objective, so effort maps directly to outcomes. Product owners can add business-value scores to focus time where it matters most. The Objectives view and the Objectives Report provide a consolidated read on progress, grounded in Jira data rather than slide decks.
Map dependencies and blockers early
Open the Dependencies view or report to see relationships across teams. Visual links highlight upstream and downstream connections and flag items at risk. Select any link to open details such as owner, due date, and next steps, so teams can act before a small issue puts pressure on the schedule. You can also filter the Program Board by Initiatives to see the contributing epics and stories, plus any dependencies that could affect them.
Teams replace anecdotal updates with evidence they can show stakeholders. Leaders can avoid reactive firefighting to focus on coaching and delivery. Most importantly, customers feel the value sooner because plans that are aligned with objectives deliver outcomes that make a real difference.
Try It: Turn Progress into Proof
Easy Agile Programs installs in minutes, and with our easy setup guide, you can create a digital program board for your teams in Jira with minimal overhead. You can test the full functionality yourself with a free 30-day evaluation period, and once you've given your teams the clear picture of progress they need in Jira, you'll see anecdotal updates transform into evidence-based progress.
Related Articles
ProductHow to Keep PI Objectives Visible in Jira from Planning to Delivery
TL;DR
Too many agile teams set clear PI objectives during Program Increment (PI) planning, only to see them fade into the background as delivery begins. Based on our conversations with program managers, release train engineers, and product owners, this post explores why objectives drift, the hidden cost of losing visibility, and how keeping team PI objectives in Jira with Easy Agile Programs creates alignment from planning through delivery. You’ll learn how to link Jira issues to objectives, measure PI objectives effectively, and keep your Jira Program Board a living source of truth.
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Over the past few months, we’ve spoken with program managers, release train engineers, product owners, and developers about one deceptively simple question: what makes team objectives actually stick? These conversations gave us an unfiltered look at the common pitfalls, the quiet wins, and the practical fixes that make objectives matter beyond the PI planning room.
Why share this? Because too many teams start a Program Increment with clear, energising PI objectives (whether they’re team PI objectives or uncommitted objectives), only to watch them fade from view as the work begins. That loss of visibility has a cost: misaligned priorities, delayed risk detection, and value left on the table.
One Release Train Engineer summed it up perfectly: “The minute those slides are closed, you’re relying on memory. That’s when teams lose the thread.”
Without visible objectives in Jira, the tool teams use every day, the bigger picture starts to blur. Swim lanes drift, dependencies go unnoticed, and progress becomes something you “feel” rather than something you can see.
In this post, we’ll share what our conversations revealed about why PI objectives drift and how keeping them visible inside Jira transforms the way teams deliver. If you’ve ever finished a quarter wondering where the original goals went, this will help you keep them front and centre - from planning through to shipped value.
Why Agile Program Objectives Drift After PI Planning (and How Jira Can Fix It)
In our customer interviews, one message came through loud and clear: the hardest part isn’t setting PI objectives, it’s keeping them alive once delivery starts.
The first few sprints often run smoothly, but as one program manager described:
“About a month in, swim lanes have drifted, and people start making decisions in isolation. Not because they don’t care, but because they can’t see the bigger picture anymore.”
When PI planning objectives sit outside the system teams use every day, they fade into the background. Leaders end up relying on subjective progress reports in meetings rather than real-time data.
As one product owner admitted: “We used to go into steering committee meetings saying ‘we think we’re fine’ because we didn’t have the numbers in front of us.”
The problem is that drift rarely shows up in burndown charts until late, when there’s little time left to correct course. By embedding PI objectives directly into Jira Program Board, teams can spot slippage early enough to adjust priorities or resources, without cutting scope or burning weekends.
The Hidden Cost of Invisible Objectives
Invisibility comes with a price. What looks like a small misalignment in week three can compound into missed delivery dates, reduced trust, and expensive rework by the end of the Increment.
An engineering manager told us:
“The team had been working flat out, but half of it wasn’t on the most important thing. That’s not a work ethic problem, that’s a visibility problem.”
In contrast, organisations that keep agile program objectives in Jira updated throughout the PI report sharper decision-making and more predictable outcomes.
“If an objective was lagging, we could see it in week two, reallocate, and still hit the deadline,” said one customer.
That kind of agility isn’t luck - it’s the result of having a clear, real-time view of where each goal stands and being able to measure PI objectives effectively during delivery.
A North Star in the Jira Program Board
Easy Agile Programs adds an Objectives layer directly to the Jira Program Board. It’s a natural extension of the workspace, not an external dashboard that risks becoming outdated. Program Managers, Release Train Engineers, and Product Owners can create team-level goals in seconds, right alongside sprints and stories.
For customers, this changes the culture around objectives. “When objectives are in Jira, they’re part of the language of the team,” one program manager said. “They’re visible in the same space we do our actual work.”
Another told us:
“I can have a 30-second look before an exec call and know exactly which goals are healthy and which need attention.”
Three Practical Steps to Make PI Objectives Stick in Jira
1. Write team-level PI objectives in plain language
Avoid jargon and write goals anyone can repeat. “If the CFO can’t explain the objective back to you, it’s too complex,” said one lead. Keep it to two to four objectives per team to maintain focus.
2. Score by business value, not just effort
Scoring keeps priority calls grounded in facts, not opinions. “When a new request pops up, we can show how it ranks against existing priorities,” a product owner explained. Business value scoring in Jira makes trade-offs clear and supports SAFe objectives by aligning work to highest value outcomes.
3. Link every Jira issue to an objective
This creates a visible goal flag on the ticket, reinforcing context for developers. “When they see the flag, they instantly know why it matters,” one engineering lead told us. That simple link turns everyday work into visible progress toward shared outcomes, and supports better dependency management when objectives cross teams.
Turning Jira into a Real-Time PI Objectives Tracker
Progress tracking in Easy Agile Programs for Jira isn’t a quarterly exercise - it’s continuous. The Objectives View blends story points completed, dependency status, and value-to-effort ratios into a live dashboard.
One program manager shared how this shifted leadership updates:
“Before, steering committee was 20 minutes of figuring out if we were in trouble. Now we walk in, show the view, and talk about solutions instead.”
Teams use it in different ways:
- Daily stand-ups: filter by objective to surface blockers tied to business goals.
- Backlog refinement: see value scores alongside story points to guide trade-offs.
- Sprint reviews: replace ticket lists with progress bars that tell a value story.
- Retrospectives: compare delivered impact with forecast value to refine scoring.
Your turn: Turn Objectives into Outcomes Everyone Can See
Across our customer conversations, one theme stands out: when PI objectives are visible inside Jira, they stop being a one-time planning exercise and become a continuous guide for decision-making. Teams know where they stand, leaders know where to focus, and everyone can connect the work in progress to the outcomes that matter most.
Keeping objectives in Jira means you’re not managing from memory or chasing updates through multiple tools. You’re working from a single source of truth that’s already embedded in your team’s day-to-day. That visibility creates alignment without extra meetings, reduces the risk of drift, and allows you to respond to change without losing sight of your goals.
As one program manager put it:
“It’s not about adding another tool - it’s about putting the goals where the work lives. That’s what keeps us aligned from planning through delivery.”
If your PI planning goals keep slipping out of sight, it’s time to bring them into the place your teams already live and breathe. Easy Agile Programs turns Jira into a living, shared objectives hub - helping you plan to ship, and then prove it.
Ready to make your objectives as visible as your work? Start a free trial of Easy Agile Programs and turn your plans into measurable progress your whole organisation can see and celebrate.
Your next 30 minutes
- Install Easy Agile Programs from the Atlassian Marketplace – it’s free to evaluate.
- Import your upcoming Program Increment – story points, sprints and existing issues sync automatically.
- Draft three objectives and link a handful of issues. Watch the Board light up with goal flags.
- Share Objectives View with your leadership Slack channel. Collect applause – and funding.
In half an hour you’ll turn opaque plans into a living dashboard that guides every commit.
FAQ: Objectives in Jira and PI Planning
1. How do you link PI objectives to Jira issues?
In Easy Agile Programs, drag and drop any issue onto an objective to create a goal flag. This keeps context visible wherever work happens.
2. What’s the benefit of tracking business value of PI objectives in Jira?
Business value scoring in Jira lets you prioritise by impact, making trade-offs data-driven and transparent to all stakeholders.
3. How does adding PI objectives in Jira help during PI Planning?
Embedding team PI objectives in Jira means the goals you set during PI Planning stay visible and measurable throughout the Increment, reducing drift and late surprises.
4. How do you measure PI objectives effectively?
Use a combination of business value scores, progress tracking in the Jira Program Board, and dependency health to assess whether objectives are on track to deliver their intended outcomes.
- Daily stand-ups: filter by objective to surface blockers tied to business goals.
Agile Best PracticeDon’t Make These 5 PI Planning Mistakes
When it comes to SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), PI planning is a critical first step in preparing a team. The gathering, often held quarterly, brings together a team, including software developers, team leaders, stakeholders, and everyone in between. Together, they complete essential planning.
While most PI planning used to occur in one big room, today’s remote and distributed teams have paved the way for online and hybrid PI planning events. It doesn’t matter so much where the session takes place, so long as it continually occurs with advance planning, team buy-in, and event execution.
We created an ultimate guide to PI Planning, which we continue to update with the latest trends, planning questions, resources, and tools. But in the post, we’ll focus on one specific aspect of PI planning — the mistakes you should avoid. ❌
The complete PI Planning solution for Jira
Easy Agile Programs
What is PI Planning, and why is it so important?
PI Planning is Program Increment Planning, which is a recurring session for teams within the same Agile Release Train (ART) to meet, align, and plan what comes next.
The planning session provides time for teams and stakeholders to align on a shared vision, discuss features, identify cross-team dependencies, and plan the roadmap that will move everything forward. Adopting SAFe begins with PI Planning, and that solid starting point is critical to the success of SAFe.
PI Planning events form the foundation of how your team works together and how a product/project develops. It’s a real-time event that typically brings a team together under one roof, which is why it’s also called big room planning. However, it doesn’t matter if your team plans together in person or if you use online tools to run remote PI Planning. The important part is making sure teams can plan in real-time and that the PI Planning session results in critical PI objectives that will set the team up for success.
If your team is successful at the PI Planning process, you will:
✅ Build trust, rapport, and collaboration between team members, product managers, different business teams, and stakeholders
✅ Align on key business values, objectives, and goals
✅ Spot dependencies and other issues before they disrupt workflow
✅ Enhance problem solving and decision making
✅ Understand what’s expected of each team member going into the next sprint
✅ Gain valuable insight from key stakeholders and business owners
✅ Ground the team in reality with expectations, timelines, and clear goals
Easy Agile Programs: Equip your remote, distributed or co-located teams for success with a digital tool for PI Planning.
PI Planning mistakes to avoid
If you can identify the potential pitfalls of PI planning, you have a better chance of avoiding them. Don’t fall prey to these common mistakes:
1. Skipping or not prioritizing PI Planning
2. Failing to thoroughly plan in advance
3. Running long or boring sessions
4. Allowing remote restraints to stand in your way
5. Missing out on retrospective insights
1. Skipping or not prioritizing PI Planning
Scaled Agile, Inc. says that “PI Planning is essential to SAFe: If you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe.” This couldn’t be more true!
PI Planning is an absolutely essential aspect of SAFe, and there’s no scenario in which it should be skipped or undervalued. Failing to effectively run a PI Planning meeting can have dire consequences for product development.
Work inevitably gets busy, and when product development falls behind or roadblocks come up, something has to give. However, no matter how tempting it may be, never allow your PI Planning to get pushed, delayed, scaled back, or skipped altogether.
Set your PI Planning date well in advance and stick to that date to ensure everyone can be available and prepared.
2. Failing to thoroughly plan in advance
Pre-PI planning is essential to the success of your event. You’ll have limited time as a group, so it’s essential that you use it wisely once the time comes.
Plan the date well in advance to ensure everyone can attend and access planning materials. Before your upcoming PI, make sure your backlog items are refined and ready so precious time isn’t wasted during the PI event.
3. Running long or boring sessions
PI Planning often includes long and heavy sessions, which can kill the vibe and stifle creativity and problem solving. 😴
Do all that you can to engage the team and keep sessions short. This can help a team participate more, invest in the session, and problem solve more effectively. Look for creative ways of running sessions that engage more than just the energetic few. Carefully consider timelines, and ensure no session runs too long to prevent boredom or wasted time.
4. Allowing remote restraints to stand in your way
There may be different challenges with running PI Planning remotely. But with advanced planning and the right tools, you can run a successful planning session no matter where your team is located.
Don’t neglect your PI Planning because your team is remote or temporarily working remotely. There are plenty of tools that can help remote teams engage online with team breakouts, video conferencing, online sticky notes, and PI Planning plugins.
Virtual breakout sessions are essential to ensuring the right people can engage at any given time and that no time is wasted. Carefully plan your remote PI Planning to ensure everyone is prepared and knows where and when they need to participate online.
5. Missing out on retrospective insights
Not to sound like a broken record, but retrospective 👏🏿 insights 👏🏻 are 👏🏾 important 👏🏽.
We know there’s only so much time allocated for PI Planning and so much to get done, but you need to make time for a short retrospective. Otherwise, you’ll never truly learn how to improve. A post-PI Planning session will allow your team to discuss the planning event, including what went well, what didn’t go well, and what could be improved for next time.
Make sure you record retrospective insights and implement important ideas into the next PI planning meeting. After all, it wouldn’t be agile if you didn’t continually try to improve your systems.
Level up your PI Planning with Easy Agile Programs
Effective planning begins with using the right tools, which is all the more important as teams do PI Planning remotely or with distributed teams.
Easy Agile builds products designed to help agile teams plan efficiently and effectively. Easy Agile Programs for Jira is ideal for helping teams effectively manage programs with streamlined visibility. It’s a complete PI Planning solution for all types of Jira users — including distributed, remote, or face-to-face.
What are the benefits of Easy Agile Programs?
With Easy Agile Programs, you can:
- Build a program board in Jira
- Effectively manage programs with streamlined visibility
- Understand the health of your program backlog/program increments
- Make real-time iterations
- Rework and adapt your PI Planning to the needs of your team.
- Spot feature level dependencies
- Deliver alignment at a large scale
- Create milestones and team swimlanes
- Align development teams or multiple different teams on goals and timelines
Learn more about the benefits of Easy Agile Programs and try it free for 30 days. We believe in being transparent about our product vision, which means you can follow our product journey, including new features, what we’re working on, and what we hope to accomplish in the future.
Agile Best PracticeA straightforward guide to building smart PI objectives
Do your teams have a clear understanding of what needs to be done – and why?
One of the keys to being agile is to focus on the work that matters. This means working on projects that add value to the business and contribute to performance. But for many organizations, teams can get caught up on the latest feature or development, without understanding how that relates to the bigger picture of what the business cares about.
To keep your team focused on what they have set out to achieve in order to deliver value and achieve business outcomes, setting smart PI Objectives is essential. We look at why they’re so important, what makes a good PI objective, and how you can use them in your organization.
At a glance:
- PI objectives help teams understand how what they’re doing matters to the business.
- Good PI objectives are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound.
- Linking features to PI objectives within the same tool makes it easier for teams and stakeholders to see how work is achieving business objectives.
What are PI objectives?
When an agile team gets together for a PI planning session, there are two key outputs:
- The Program Board (ART Planning Board in SAFe 6.0) covers big picture information such as features, dependencies between teams, and milestones. A feature is an agreed upon piece of work identified as being important to meeting business needs. For software development teams, this might be a new product feature. For marketing teams, it might be a website refresh or an advertising campaign.
- PI objectives link the scheduled features to broader business objectives and value. This helps align work that needs to be done with broader business goals. They are then broken down into committed and uncommitted objectives.
- Committed objectives are those the team is confident they can deliver within the Program Increment. These objectives have been committed by the team through a confidence vote.
- Uncommitted objectives are those the team have low confidence in delivering but can help to build a buffer into the PI. This is because while the outcome of these objectives may not be certain, they are included in the teams capacity and plan for the PI should capacity remain after delivering on committed objectives.
The benefits of having smart PI objectives
PI objectives link what teams are working on to what the business cares about. They create alignment with business objectives by clearly connecting features to business value. As a result, teams know how their work is adding value.
Smart PI objectives provide a framework for this. They help build trust, create a shared language, and provide a clear direction. Everyone in the team can then understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and why it’s important.
Without smart PI objectives in place, teams can spend time on tasks that aren’t adding value to the business and impact agility.
PI objectives are essential to your ability to measure success. Completing features alone isn't enough - they must drive a business outcome. They help get teams clear on why the work they do matters and define what success looks like.
What makes a good PI objective?
We’ve talked about why PI objectives are so critical, and now we’ll explain what makes a good PI objective.
Good PI objectives:
- Allow the business to see deliverables in a set timeframe
- Provide clarity on how scheduled work fits into the big picture
- Enhance communication between teams and stakeholders
- Include no more than 7 to 10 objectives in total
- Aligns with what the business cares about
- Are clear on why it’s important and what it will deliver
- Are understood by anyone who picks them up
Are SMART – that is, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound
PI objectives need to be SMART
Using the SMART goal-setting framework to write your PI objectives helps keep your objectives clear and concise. Under this framework, your PI objective needs to be:
- Specific – Clearly and explicitly state the intended outcome of your objective.
- Measurable – Describe what your team needs to do to achieve the objective and how they will quantify success. Stakeholder feedback should form part of this.
- Achievable – Ensure the objective is realistic and within your team’s control and influence.
- Relevant – Align the objective with overall business objectives.
- Timebound – Set an appropriate timeframe to achieve the objective within the PI.
Team PI objectiveEnsure Easy Agile server customers have a seamless option to migrate to cloud by implementing JCMA and site import/export by the end of Q3.
Tips for writing SMART (and smart) PI objectives
Typically, many teams will run PI planning sessions in one tool, and then use another tool (like Confluence) to record PI objectives.
But separating PI objectives from the planning sessions makes it hard for the team and stakeholders to see how the work is shifting the dial for the business.
With the Easy Agile Programs, you can directly link your features to your objectives within the same tool. You're also able to describe the objective within Easy Agile Programs and assign business value:
By connecting features to PI objectives within the same tool, teams and business stakeholders gain clear visibility of work. They can see how their work is helping to achieve business objectives.
Learn more
Using the SMART framework to define PI objectives helps your teams focus on the right work. They align projects with broader business goals while providing a shared understanding across teams. By working towards the same purpose, they help keep your teams and organization productive and agile.
You can with Easy Agile Programs
Ready to bring your PI Objectives into Jira?