Goal alignment overview in Adobe Workfront Goals

Last update: April 1, 2025

Topics:
Workfront Goals

CREATED FOR:

User

IMPORTANT

Your organization must have the following to use the functionality described in this article:

For the new plan and license structure:
- The Ultimate Workfront plan
For the current plan and license structure:
- A Pro or higher Workfront plan
- An Adobe Workfront Goals license in addition to a Workfront license.

Contact your Workfront account manager to learn about a Workfront Goals license.

For additional information about access to Workfront Goals, see Requirements to use Workfront Goals.

Goal alignment is an important part of goal management. You can ensure everyone in your organization is on the same page about what must be achieved to drive strategy forward by aligning their goals to each other and to the organizational goals of teams, groups, and the company.

After the top level company, team, or group goals are established and reviewed, direct reports and team members must then create more focused goals that cascade from the top level. The scope of these goals should be more narrow and should take into consideration the individual who is designated as responsible for the goal and their scope of influence. The goal should answer the question of what they and their team must achieve to fulfill the parent goal to which it is aligned.

For more information about best practices when aligning goals, see Get started with Adobe Workfront Goals.

Considerations for aligning goals

A goal cannot contribute to more than one other goal at the same time. Although you can have multiple children goals aligned to the same parent goal, a child goal can only have one parent. For information about parent and children goals, see the Understand parent and children goals section in this article.
A goal can have several aligned (or children) goals, as well as several activities and results. In addition, each child goal can have other activities and results that influence its progress as well as the progress of the parent goal.

TIP
We recommend to keep this structure as simple as possible.
You should update different kinds of goals, depending on your role. For example:
- As an individual contributor, we recommend that you contribute to your own goals which should be aligned to team, group, and company-level goals. Updating your own goals should update the progress on all other parent goals.
- As a CEO or business manager, we recommend that you contribute to your goals, as well as update those assigned to teams, groups, and the company.

Types of goal alignment

There are two approaches for aligning goals:

A bottom-up alignment: You can directly connect a child goal to a parent goal. For information about bottom-up goal alignment, see Align goals by connecting them in Adobe Workfront Goals.
A top-down alignment: You can convert a result or an activity of a goal into another goal. The new goal becomes the child goal of the original goal which becomes the parent. For information about top-down goal alignment, see Align goals by converting results and activities to goals.

For information about parent and children goals, see the Understand parent and children goals section in this article.

Understand parent and children goals

When you align goals to one another, one goal becomes the parent goal and the other the child goal. The progress of children goals influences the progress of the parent goals. This creates a goal hierarchy.

Consider the following when working with children and parent goals:

You can align multiple children goals to the same parent goal.
One child goal can only have one parent goal.
The progress of the children goals indicated by their results and activities influences the progress of the parent goal. Other activities or results associated with the parent goal also influence the progress of the parent goal.
You cannot update the progress of a child goal at the parent goal’s level. You must update the child goal’s activities and results, and this automatically updates the progress of the child as well as that of the parent goal.

For information about updating progress on goals, see Update goal progress in Adobe Workfront Goals.

Locate aligned goals

After aligning goals, they are part of the same hierarchy and are visible in various areas of Workfront Goals.

You can view children and parent goals in the following areas:

The Progress Indicators section on a goal’s page, under the Type:Goal grouping.
Goal Alignment section of the Goals page.

recommendation-more-help