Program Management

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

1. Install Easy Agile Programs from the Atlassian Marketplace – it’s free to evaluate.
   
   
2. Import your upcoming Program Increment – story points, sprints and existing issues sync automatically.
   
   
3. Draft three objectives and link a handful of issues. Watch the Board light up with goal flags.
   
   
4. 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.

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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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

‍TL;DR

• Simplified OKRs to two levels for clarity and focus.
• Introduced monthly confidence scoring to catch issues early.
• Strengthened cross-team collaboration and ownership.
• Replaced rigid planning with flexible roadmaps.
• How Easy Agile Programs helps teams align daily work with strategic goals.
• FAQs to help you improve your own OKR process.

At Easy Agile, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to structure, align, and apply Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in a way that actually works.

When we first introduced OKRs, our goal was to bring more strategic clarity and better alignment. But as our company grew, so did the complexity. Teams found themselves trying to work through vague objectives, siloed collaboration, and a rigid process that made it hard to adapt quickly when things changed.

Over time, through reflection and continuous feedback, we realised that great OKRs don’t just need to be clear. They also need a process that’s flexible and practical enough to help teams focus and deliver in real time.

If your organisation is running into similar issues, our journey might help you find a better path to strategy alignment.

Why We Had to Rethink Our OKRs

Our original OKR setup had company, function, and team-level objectives. While this seemed like a thorough structure, it ended up creating more complexity than clarity.

Many teams told us they felt overwhelmed by how many objectives they had to manage. Often, these objectives didn’t feel clearly tied to the overall direction of the company, which made it hard to prioritise or stay motivated.

Collaboration between teams also suffered. Important dependencies weren’t always spotted early, which led to mid-quarter issues and a lot of reactive work. On top of that, our quarterly planning cycle was too rigid. It didn’t give us enough room to pause, learn from what was happening, or shift priorities when something changed.

One of the biggest challenges was the way we tracked progress. Without a shared approach to scoring, it was hard to tell how things were really going. Teams weren’t always sure whether they were on track or falling behind, and by the time we found out, it was often too late to course correct.

From our feedback sessions, we heard some consistent problems:

• OKRs became a checkbox activity. Teams felt like they had to create objectives every quarter, but didn’t see them as useful for real decision-making.
• High-level company OKRs felt too abstract. It wasn’t clear how day-to-day work connected to broader goals.
• Cross-team collaboration was difficult. Dependencies surfaced late, which made it harder to stay aligned and meet deadlines.
• The planning cadence was too inflexible. We weren’t creating space for reflection or change during the quarter.
• Scoring was inconsistent. With no shared method for reviewing progress, we often missed early signs that something wasn’t working.

All of this made it clear: we didn’t need to adjust our OKRs; we needed to completely rethink them.

Our New OKR System: Before and After

Rather than making small tweaks, we decided to completely redesign our OKR framework. We simplified it and built in more flexibility. We wanted fewer OKRs, better collaboration, and a stronger link between strategy and delivery.

Here’s a snapshot of what changed:

Core Principles Guiding Our New Framework

This wasn’t just a structural update. It was a mindset shift. We redefined the role OKRs should play in our company and focused on what our teams actually need to do their best work: alignment, focus, and the ability to learn and adapt.

Value Over Volume

We aim for fewer, more meaningful objectives. This helps teams stay focused on what really matters without feeling overwhelmed.

Strategic Alignment

Every objective now connects clearly to a company priority. This makes it easier for teams to see how their work contributes to broader goals.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

OKRs are designed to be shared across teams. We make sure that responsibilities and dependencies are visible and co-owned.

Learning and Adaptability

We use regular check-ins, not just end-of-quarter reviews, to reflect on what’s working, spot risks, and adjust as we go.

Scoring OKRs: A More Consistent Rhythm for Progress Tracking

To improve how we track progress, we introduced a unified 1–5 confidence scoring system across the company.

Every month, teams rate their confidence in each Key Result - not just whether it’s complete, but whether we’re on track to achieve the intended outcome by the end of the quarter.

Here’s how it works:

This shared model has helped create a common language for progress, better conversations in our check-ins about what’s really happening, and proactive course corrections.

Early Wins and What’s Next

We knew this shift would take time. But even in the early stages, we’re seeing positive changes across the business. These aren’t just surface-level changes; they’re shifts in how teams think about impact, alignment, and shared responsibility.

Here’s what has stood out so far:

• Stronger strategic clarity. Teams now see how their work links to broader goals. This clarity has unlocked better prioritisation and stronger engagement.
• Improved cross-functional planning. We’re catching dependencies earlier, which means fewer mid-quarter surprises and more consistent momentum across shared initiatives.
• More meaningful check-ins. Our monthly reviews are no longer just updates. They’re real opportunities to reflect, course-correct, and celebrate progress - especially when confidence scores trend upward.

Of course, we’re not done yet. The next iteration will focus on simplifying how dependencies are captured, giving teams better support in shaping roadmaps, and reinforcing consistent practices around scoring.

How Easy Agile Programs Can Help Teams Operationalise OKRs

Once we have a clearer OKR structure, we need the right tools to support it. Easy Agile Programs helps teams turn strategy into execution that keeps OKRs visible, flexible, and connected to delivery.

Visual Goal Alignment

Easy Agile Programs makes it easy to connect team roadmaps to strategic OKRs. This helps everyone understand how their work supports the big picture - without needing to cross-reference multiple tools.

Better Collaboration and Transparency

With the Dependency Report in Easy Agile Programs, teams can visualise how their work intersects with others’ across the organisation. This early visibility helps surface potential blockers and makes it easier to coordinate shared timelines before risks turn into issues.

Strategic Prioritisation

The Objectives Report gives teams a real-time view of which objectives are in play, who’s contributing, and how much progress has been made. It helps teams stay focused on outcomes, not just activity - making it easier to course correct or re-align when needed.

OKRs Are Only as Strong as the System Behind Them

We don’t believe in one-size-fits-all frameworks. What we’ve built is a system that works for our size, our rhythm, and our teams.

It’s not about having perfect OKRs. It’s about having the right environment around them - a rhythm of planning and reflection, a shared language of progress, and clear alignment between strategy and delivery.

And getting that environment right means using tools that could support the way we actually work.

Easy Agile Programs can help with that. It gives teams the structure and visibility to turn strategic goals into coordinated execution. It helps bring teams into the planning process earlier, surface risks sooner, and keep OKRs connected to real work throughout the quarter - not just at the start and end.

OKRs don’t live in documents. They live in decisions and in the day-to-day choices teams make about where to focus. Having a tool that keeps those choices visible, flexible, and aligned will make a real difference.

We’re still learning and refining. But this shift has already helped us work with more clarity, more collaboration, and more confidence in where we’re heading.

If you’re running into similar challenges with your OKRs, we’ve been there. We’d love to share more about what’s worked for us - and hear how others are building systems that turn goals into real progress.

Get in touch with us →

FAQs: Implementing Effective OKRs

How does Easy Agile establish cross-functional OKRs?

The Leadership Team drafts initial cross-functional OKRs aligned to strategic priorities, actively incorporating detailed input from teams to ensure practicality and alignment.

Do teams maintain autonomy within this OKR framework?

Yes, teams have full autonomy in determining how they operationalise OKRs through their individual roadmaps, balancing clear strategic direction with operational flexibility.

How do teams understand their contributions to OKRs?

Easy Agile Programs explicitly highlights collaborating teams and relevant initiatives, providing clarity on responsibilities and proactively managing dependencies.

What does ownership of a cross-functional OKR entail?

Ownership involves strategic coordination, proactive communication, risk management, and progress tracking—not necessarily performing every task directly.

How are routine operational tasks managed?

Operational tasks (“Keep The Lights On” activities) are tracked separately within team roadmaps, ensuring clear strategic focus without operational disruption.

How does Easy Agile handle off-track OKRs?

Our simplified 1-5 scoring system proactively identifies risks, enabling teams to quickly intervene and make agile adjustments.

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Collaboration in large-scale organisations often reveals friction in places teams expect to run smoothly. As product and development functions scale, the number of moving parts increases. So does the risk of misalignment.

At Easy Agile, conversations with our customers frequently surface familiar challenges. While each organisation is unique, the core struggles of collaboration are shared. To protect the privacy of the teams we spoke to, we’ve anonymised all quotes. But every insight is real, direct from the people doing the work.

This post is for anyone navigating the complexity of scaled collaboration, whether you're leading a team or working within one. Sometimes the hardest part is seeing the problem clearly. These are the patterns teams are running into, the questions they’re wrestling with, and the cracks that emerge when planning, alignment, and communication break down. Understanding and acknowledging these issues is the first step toward solving them.

Here’s what teams are experiencing and the key questions they’re grappling with as they scale collaboration.

TL;DR – Common collaboration challenges in scale-ups and enterprises:

• Teams struggle with communication and alignment, especially when working across multiple teams or departments
• Managing cross-team dependencies is a significant challenge, often causing delays and requiring frequent coordination
• Capacity planning and skill allocation are difficult, particularly when teams have to balance project work with ongoing operational tasks
• Teams face challenges in breaking down work effectively and maintaining visibility of progress across different teams
• Frequent changes in priorities and scope creep disrupt team planning and execution
• There are difficulties in translating high-level strategy into actionable team priorities and objectives
• Teams struggle with effective retrospectives and continuous improvement processes

What breaks down in cross-team communication?

Communication challenges tend to intensify with scale. As soon as multiple teams are involved, misalignment becomes more likely. A Senior Product Manager from a global HR tech firm described a pattern many teams will recognise:

"One of the main themes I heard in conversations with leadership was the lack of process, transparency, visibility, and dependency tracking. It’s always been manual across teams. We’ve done a really good job, but there’s an opportunity to do better."

Another team member highlighted how this disconnect tends to grow over time:

"At the start of each quarter, our conversations are strategic and cross-functional, involving sales and strategy teams. But as we dive deeper into execution, communication shrinks down to daily engineering huddles, and essential alignment details often get lost."

The problem isn't a lack of communication, but rather a shift in its focus. When delivery takes centre stage, strategic context gets sidelined. When teams move into execution mode, that shift in communication cadence creates blind spots across departments, leading to confusion, duplicated work, or misaligned outputs.

Why is managing dependencies across teams so difficult?

Dependencies create friction when they aren’t visible or clearly owned. Coordination across teams can be derailed by unclear sequencing, late handovers, or competing timelines. An Agile Coach at a financial institution shared:

"We had to run bi-weekly cross-program dependency calls just to stay on top of what was blocking who. We just list dependencies manually, there isn’t any unified visibility. At the ART level, it’s a mix of RTEs, Scrum Masters, and team members trying to link things, but beyond that, it falls apart"

A delivery leader at a global credit bureau reinforced the limitations of existing tools:

"I’ve never successfully been able to really tackle dependency visualization and put a process around that. It's always been manual. When I'm speaking to an executive, that means something... But when I'm speaking to someone on an agile team, it changes as it rolls up...Without proper plugins, even a robust tool like Jira struggles to provide clear dependency visuals. Planning becomes complicated quickly, leaving teams stuck."

Dependency risk increases when shared work isn’t tracked or visualised in a way that’s accessible to all stakeholders. Teams need to see not just their own work, but how it connects with others. Teams need more than awareness - they need shared visibility, clarity on ownership, and consistent ways to plan around dependencies.

How do teams manage capacity when demands keep shifting?

Planning team capacity isn’t just about headcount, but also about competing demands. Teams are often asked to deliver roadmap initiatives while supporting legacy systems, resolving production issues, or addressing technical debt. A product leader from a cybersecurity company shared:

"We’re always trying to achieve a lot with limited resources, and it makes roadmapping really difficult. We’ve made progress in estimating the team's bandwidth more accurately by looking at what they actually delivered last quarter. But we still hit the same issue - too many topics, too little time."

Another team shared how they introduced tighter prioritisation controls using a third-party tool, but even rigid structures have their limits:

"We use XXX as a source of truth for prioritisation. We have around 80 different initiatives prioritised from 1 to 80 of importance... no meeting can be scheduled if the project is not approved in the tool."

This helped formalise approvals and reduce noise, but it also revealed a deeper issue. Even with a strict gating process, the volume of initiatives stayed high, and prioritisation alone couldn’t solve for limited capacity. Clearer structures don’t automatically reduce the demand on teams or ease delivery expectations. That tension persists unless strategic scope is also narrowed.

What makes work breakdown and visibility so hard to maintain?

Breaking down initiatives into independent, testable stories is not always straightforward, especially when scope is uncertain or spans months. A software engineer working across multiple teams explained:

"Breaking work down is hard - some teams still think in layers. They say, ‘This only delivers value when the whole thing’s done.’ On top of that, we often run big planning in a five-hour day or stretch it awkwardly over two days. Third parties and shared services don’t get folded into teams, which makes breakdown and clarity harder."

Large epics often outlive the context in which they were created. As scope evolves, teams may struggle to maintain clear acceptance criteria and shared understanding.

An Agile Coach reinforced how hard it is to keep sight of progress:

"We break each story into smaller pieces as much as possible where it's testable by itself so the testing team can test it... But if it’s a lengthy project, spanning more than two months, it’s easy to lose clarity and effectiveness...Consistently tracking actions across multiple sprints involves endless toggling. It's difficult to quickly understand what's truly improving and what’s still stuck."

As work grows more complex, clarity suffers. Without reliable visibility, work risks stalling or repeating unnecessarily. Teams need tools, systems, and shared language to ensure breakdowns don’t get lost in the shuffle and progress remains meaningful.

Why do changing priorities and scope creep derail plans?

Frequent priority changes and scope creep disrupt planning discipline. They often signal deeper issues: vague goals, shifting leadership expectations, or unclear ownership. One product leader summed it up:

"Priorities used to switch constantly - sometimes halfway through a project, we’d have 30% done and then get pulled into something else. That context-switching really hurts. It demoralises engineers who were already deep into a feature. We had to raise it in a full engineering and product retrospective just to get some stability."

Another shared the toll it takes on delivery teams:

"We often found ourselves mid-quarter pivoting to newly emerging business needs, without fully aligning on what gets dropped. That lack of clarity meant engineers felt whiplash, and team goals kept shifting."

Without stable anchors in the form of clear goals and boundaries, even well-planned work can unravel. Work, then, expands to fill the available sprint, regardless of long-term impact, which brings us to the next challenge.

What stops teams from aligning strategy to daily work?

Teams need clear goals. But clarity breaks down when strategic objectives are too broad or when every team interprets them differently. A senior product manager explained:

"Prioritisation is only as good as your strategy, and ours wasn’t clear. The business goal was just ‘grow revenue,’ but what does that mean? Acquisition? Retention? Everyone wrote their own product objectives. It became a bit of a free-for-all. When goals are vague, it’s hard to prioritise work that ladders up to anything concrete."

Another added:

"We all set objectives tied to broad company goals, but when those goals lack precision, our objectives become misaligned, making prioritisation difficult and often inconsistent."

Without alignment between leadership priorities and team-level execution, valuable work can feel directionless. Objectives become outputs rather than outcomes.

What holds back meaningful retrospectives?

Retrospectives are intended to surface learning. But without consistent follow-through, they risk becoming routine. One Agile Coach shared how to keep them practical:

"We’ve tried tools where you just send a link and everyone rates how hard it was to get something done. But too often, it ends up with one person speaking and everyone else just agreeing. We’re trying to avoid the loudest voice dominating the retro. It’s still a challenge to get real, reflective conversations."

Another shared the risk of retro fatigue:

"To track action items consistently isn't easy... I have to toggle down and look at each one, which can make things cumbersome when ensuring certain behaviours have stuck...Effective retrospectives should surface recurring issues, not just review the recent past. Discussing ongoing challenges helps teams proactively tackle problems and move forward."

The barrier is rarely the ceremony - it’s the follow-up. Teams need lightweight ways to track retro actions, validate changes, and revisit unresolved pain points.

Where to focus

Improving collaboration means addressing the systems and habits that hold teams back:

• Keep strategic conversations active, not just at quarterly planning.
• Visualise and track cross-team dependencies clearly.
• Protect capacity for both roadmap work and operational stability.
• Break work into testable, clearly defined pieces.
• Reinforce the connection between business goals and delivery priorities.
• Make retrospective actions visible and measurable.

The teams we speak to aren’t struggling because they lack process. They’re navigating complexity. The opportunity lies in simplifying where it matters and supporting teams with the clarity to make progress, together.

The first step is recognising these patterns and giving them language. When teams can see and name the problem, they’re already on the path to solving it.

How Easy Agile can help

Whether you're dealing with blurred dependencies, vague objectives or sprint volatility, Easy Agile offers three purpose-built solutions to help teams stay aligned:

• Easy Agile Programs brings structure and visibility to cross-team planning in Jira. Perfect for managing dependencies and long-range planning across multiple teams and projects.
• Easy Agile Roadmaps gives every team a simple, shared timeline view, so they can prioritise and sequence work with strategic context.
• Easy Agile TeamRhythm makes sprint planning, story mapping, and retrospectives more engaging and purposeful, turning agile ceremonies into actionable, team-owned progress.

Weaving alignment and empathy into team dynamics can revolutionize software delivery. So why aren't we all doing that?

It's a real challenge for organizations with numerous teams contributing to complex software, to achieve real alignment and consensus on user needs. But it's one well worth pursuing. Striking a balance between alignment on business goals and customer empathy ensures that the software your teams are developing truly resonates with users and fulfills those business goals.

Why Alignment Matters in Agile Programs

Alignment is more than just goal setting across teams. It's about connecting workflows, acknowledging challenges, and crafting solutions that encompass everyone’s perspectives, including the needs of your users. As Tony Camacho shared on the Easy Agile Podcast:

"Alignment isn’t just about goals—it’s about understanding each other’s workflows, needs, and challenges to create solutions that work for everyone."

This comprehensive strategic alignment is crucial for steering teams in the same direction. In large enterprises, team alignment means that agile release trains can function cohesively, and strategic business goals are successfully translated across diverse teams and departments. Strong alignment empowers cross-functional teams to sustain momentum and unity at scale, even as the product roadmap evolves. For agile release trains, effective alignment means that everyone is doing their part, pulling in the same direction, and delivering successful software.  

Customer Empathy and User-Centric Development

Customer empathy is the cornerstone of aligning business goals with user needs and developing software that delivers a seamless user experience. It's about getting to know your users, their needs, and their experience with your product so that you can create better solutions for them.

"The key to meeting user needs is empathy. When teams deeply understand their users, every product decision naturally aligns with providing value."

Tony Comacho

This ethos fuels decision-making and design that prioritizes user needs and values over functional deliverables. It's great to build and release something, but not-so-great if nobody uses it.  Agile leaders who embed empathy within their teams cultivate a customer-driven culture, resulting in software solutions that address genuine challenges and delight their audience.

Empathy enhances the process of gathering requirements, conducting user testing, and embracing iterative design. Combined with effective agile program management, empathy aligns business goals with user expectations, and is a great way to improve engagement with your software and reduce churn, paving the way for successful software delivery and user retention.

Building Clarity for Effective Collaboration

Building impactful software at scale demands effective collaboration and clarity.

"Effective collaboration is rooted in clarity. Teams need to feel supported by having a shared vision and understanding of the product journey."

Tony Comacho

Cross-team alignment revolves around establishing a unified vision and setting clear goals and expectations across the agile release train. For enterprise agile solutions that support PI Planning and Product Roadmapping, upholding this clarity allows large teams to work independently yet cohesively, ensuring a targeted approach to addressing both business and user needs.

How to Achieve Agile Alignment at Scale

To encourage team alignment around user needs in your organization:

• Invest in User Research & Design: Start talking to your users; and keep talking to them. Implement user-focused design practices, gathering insights from users throughout the development stages to effectively align user needs and business goals.
• Share Vision and Goals: Regularly communicate with your teams about business objectives and user needs, ensuring they are central to your agile program.
• Use Alignment Tools and Frameworks: Leverage agile tools that help you track objectives and development milestones to ensure team alignment and cross-team collaboration. Make goals and priorities easily accessible for all your teams.
• Encourage Transparent Communication: Cultivate an environment where feedback crosses team boundaries, maintaining cross-team alignment and empathy.‍

The Benefits of Alignment and Empathy in Software Delivery

Better outcomes for your software start when business goals are aligned with user needs. Programs that place strategic agile alignment and customer empathy at the forefront, not only meet user expectations but improve the value they offer to their customers. With good agile program management, the outcome is a streamlined, effective agile release train that consistently delivers exceptional software solutions. Which is what we all want, right?

As you work towards better alignment in your agile program, nurturing empathy and clarity can unlock significant gains in satisfaction for your users and for your teams, which is great news for the overall success of your program.

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🎧 Want to hear more from Tony? Listen to The power of team alignment on the Easy Agile Podcast.

Agile is about being flexible and always getting better—essential for delivering great software. But when scaling agile across teams in a program, being adaptable and flexible is easier said than done. In this post, we'll dig into the ins and outs of agile program management to help you:

• Tackle common challenges
• Use metrics and feedback loops to keep improving
• Leverage leadership for the best chance of success

By identifying some clear and actionable steps that you can start implementing now, you’ll improve your approach to program management and make your software delivery smoother and more efficient.

Overcoming Common Challenges in Agile Program Management

From dealing with dependencies to managing stakeholder expectations and balancing speed with quality, here are some challenges you might face now.

Dealing with Dependencies

Dependencies are a necessary part of working on complex software, and they need to be managed carefully to avoid disrupting delivery schedules.

Identifying dependencies early is key to keeping things running smoothly. By spotting potential bottlenecks early, like during PI Planning, we can nip them in the bud before they turn into major headaches, and:

• allocate resources more effectively
• streamline communication across teams
• keep everyone on the same page with a shared timeline.

Maintain clear communication channels and regular alignment meetings to address dependencies swiftly and efficiently. This helps everything stay in sync, and hopefully avoids last-minute 'surprises', for a more reliable delivery.

Managing Stakeholder Expectations

We can't deliver complex software on our own, so ensuring that our colleagues are informed and onboard is critical. Managing expectations across a large program is a complex challenge, but you'll be off to a great start if you are able to keep communication consistent:

• Regular Updates: Keep the lines of communication open and honest, and provide frequent updates to keep everyone in the loop.
• Be Transparent: Maintain a central source of truth for project information that everyone has access to, ensuring that objectives, milestones and priorities are clear.
• Set Realistic Expectations: Avoid over-promising and stay realistic about what can be achieved.
• Prioritize and Manage Feedback: Inevitably, there will be changes in priorities or feedback from stakeholders. It's important to have a process for managing these requests and ensuring they align with the program goals.

Agile tools that offer clear visibility into objectives, dependencies, and progress, can be the bridge between your development teams and stakeholders in leadership and other parts of the business.

By focusing on these areas, you’re not just managing expectations—you’re making sure everyone is part of the process.

The bridge between development teams and leadership, with objectives, milestones and dependencies all in one. Watch a demo or try for yourself.

Easy Agile Programs

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Balancing Speed with Quality

In a perfect world, we would all deliver amazing software that our customers love, at lightning speed. But the reality is that balancing time-to-market with quality is an ongoing challenge.

Agile practices like organizing work to deliver incrementally are part of the solution; they help identify problems early and deliver in a way that makes more sense than following a Gantt chart until the timelines blow out and it all falls over.

So while agile won’t make your development teams type faster, it can help them, as well as your colleagues in Product, and QA, learn what works faster, and how they can collaborate better to deliver work with quality.

Metrics and Feedback Loops

Metrics can be a powerful tool in agile program management. Velocity, burn-down charts, cycle time, lead time, and dependency reports can give valuable insights into how our teams are performing and how our projects are progressing.

• Velocity: Long-term trends help us understand team commitment over time, and estimate what can be achieved going into a sprint.
• Burn-down charts: Valuable for gauging progress throughout execution and spotting barriers to delivery.
• Cycle time: Uncover inefficiencies or bottlenecks where tasks are likely to get delayed or stuck.
• Lead time: Use the difference between an expected lead time and the actual lead time, as a starting point for understanding where delivery is being held up.
• Dependency reports: Use a snapshot of dependencies in your program to understand how teams are dependent on each other and where the biggest risks are.

Monitoring these metrics will give you a clearer picture of where work is progressing well and where you might need to make adjustments. Think of them as your project’s health check-up; a temperature check that can improve the predictability of your release.

With powerful dependency reports, you can identify bottlenecks, streamline communication, and keep your projects on track.

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Establishing Effective Feedback Loops

Feedback loops are integral to delivering software with market fit. Sprint reviews and retrospectives offer teams the opportunity to reflect on their performance, identify areas for improvement, and make necessary adjustments. DevOps practices like continuous integration further ensure that the code is consistently tested and integrated, reducing the risk of significant issues going unnoticed.

Using metrics and feedback loops allows teams to deliver software with greater predictability and transparency. Applying these practices consistently across a program means that you're better able to manage the planning and execution of work to deliver complex software to your customers in a predictable way.

The Role of Leadership in Agile Program Management

Great leadership is key to building an agile culture. It's not just about making decisions from the top; it's understanding team needs and clearing the way for them to be effective. But old 'command and control' habits are difficult to break.

As a program manager, you're the glue that connects the strategic vision of leadership with the hands-on work of development teams. Keep those communication lines open and reciprocal, so everyone understands the business goals and the strategic importance of their tasks, as well as progress and barriers to execution.

• Use agile tools to maintain a central source of truth, to give everyone a clear view of project progress and potential roadblocks.
• Foster a culture of regular feedback and continuous improvement. This proactive approach helps tackle challenges head-on and keeps everyone aligned with business objectives.
• Promote transparency and adaptability to help teams quickly adjust to changing priorities.

Keep these things in mind to help you plan and deliver with confidence. You may be the glue that holds it all together, but you can't be everything for everyone. Enlist help where you need it, and encourage an open and transparent culture where strategic priorities are understood, and everyone can see how the focus of their work contributes to the bigger picture.

An Agile Approach to Change

Taking a new approach to program management doesn’t need to be daunting. Once you’ve identified the changes that make sense for you, take an agile approach and implement incrementally. Every small change you make adds up over time and can lead to measurable improvement.

How Easy Agile Programs Can Help

Easy Agile Programs is a Jira integration that supports agile program management. It is a central source of truth for the issues, milestones, team objectives, and dependencies that make up a program of work.

Dependency maps and reports help you see the nature of cross-team dependencies clearly, so you and your teams can reorganize to avoid roadblocks that would otherwise blow out timelines with unexpected delays.

Easy to set up and tightly integrated with Jira, Easy Agile Programs supports scaled team planning and execution so you have greater confidence in delivering great software as each program increment begins.