Digital.ai Agility 26.1: Connecting Strategy to Work

Every enterprise has goals. The harder problem is keeping those goals connected to the work teams plan and deliver. Objectives may live in one system, roadmaps in another, and execution in team backlogs. When those layers drift apart, leaders can see activity without knowing whether it is advancing strategy, while teams can deliver successfully without a clear view of the outcomes their work is meant to influence. 

Digital.ai Agility 26.1 addresses that disconnect by bringing Objectives and Key Results directly into Agility and making strategic relationships more visible inside enterprise roadmaps. Organizations can create and manage OKRs, connect them to executable work, track progress, and organize roadmap views around objectives, measurable results, and planned releases—all within the same planning environment. 

The strategy-to-execution gap is a planning gap 

Strategy often starts at the executive level and becomes increasingly diluted as it moves through portfolios, programs, products, and teams. An objective such as improving customer retention or accelerating a strategic product initiative may be clear at the beginning of a planning cycle. But by the time teams are prioritizing Epics, Stories, and Defects, the connection between daily work and the original outcome can become difficult to see. 

That creates a familiar enterprise problem: teams can tell you what they are working on, but leaders struggle to see why that work matters. Native OKR management allows organizations to create objectives and measurable key results inside Agility and associate them directly with work. Objectives can connect to Epics and Strategic Themes, while Key Results can be associated with Epics, Stories, and Defects. Progress can then be tracked through Key Result completion and those work-item relationships. 

The result is a planning model where strategic intent does not have to remain separate from execution reality. 

Five ways Digital.ai Agility 26.1 connects strategy to execution

Manage OKRs where planning and execution already happen

Agility 26.1 introduces native Objectives and Key Results capabilities for standard cloud and on-premise environments, replacing the previous Platform OKR integration with an integrated Agility experience. FedRAMP Gov Cloud support was not included in the 26.1 release and is planned for a future release. 

Teams can create Objectives and measurable Key Results with customizable fields, manage them directly within Agility, and connect those goals to work without maintaining a separate strategic planning system.

Create a traceable connection from goals to executable work

OKRs become significantly more valuable when they are connected to the work intended to move them. Agility 26.1 allows Objectives to be linked with Epics and Strategic Themes and Key Results to be associated with Epics, Stories, and Defects. The release also supports cascading OKRs so organizations can establish hierarchical alignment across organizational and team-level goals. 

Instead of asking teams to interpret strategy independently, organizations can make the relationship explicit: Objective → Key Result → Work 

That creates a clearer line of sight between strategic intent and execution, helping portfolio, product, and delivery leaders evaluate not only whether work is progressing, but whether the work being prioritized supports the outcomes that matter.

Organize roadmaps around outcomes—not just work hierarchies

Roadmaps are most useful when they help stakeholders understand the meaning behind the work, not simply its position on a timeline. With 26.1, Roadmap Board and Timeline views can group Portfolio Items by Objective, Key Result, or Planned Release. Teams can organize work around strategic goals, measurable outcomes, or delivery milestones depending on the planning conversation they need to have. 

Portfolio Items associated with multiple Objectives or Key Results appear separately for each relationship, helping preserve visibility into all of the strategic outcomes that work supports. Only Objectives, Key Results, or Releases associated with Portfolio Items are shown in the roadmap. That turns the roadmap from a static representation of planned work into a more useful strategic planning view.

Track progress as execution changes

Strategic planning becomes fragile when progress depends on manually updating presentations or status reports. 

Native OKRs in Agility can track progress through Key Result completion and work-item associations, bringing execution signals closer to the strategic goals they support. Organizations can also organize OKRs into sessions—for example quarterly or annual planning periods—and archive them as planning cycles change. 

It creates an opportunity for leaders to ask a more valuable question during the planning cycle: Given what teams are delivering, are we still making progress toward the outcome we intended?

Give different stakeholders the strategic views they need

Not every stakeholder needs to see OKRs in the same way. Agility 26.1 lets users combine filters and column configurations into saved OKR list views. Those views can be named, reused, duplicated, renamed, previewed, deleted, and shared through links so teams can establish consistent perspectives for different planning conversations. 

A product leader might focus on active product Objectives. A portfolio leader may want a broader view across strategic initiatives. A team may focus on the Key Results most closely connected to its current work. Saved views make it easier to move between those perspectives without repeatedly rebuilding the same reporting configuration. 

Four moves to make now 

Bring OKRs into the planning conversation. If Objectives and Key Results currently live outside the system where teams plan work, identify a pilot portfolio or product area where strategy and execution can be connected directly in Agility. 

Map goals to actual work. Start with a small number of strategically important Objectives and connect their Key Results to the Epics, Stories, and other work expected to influence them. The goal is meaningful traceability, not attaching every work item to an OKR. 

Use roadmaps to test strategic alignment. Group Portfolio Items by Objective or Key Result and examine where investment is concentrated. Look for important goals with too little supporting work—and large bodies of work with no clear strategic relationship. 

Create stakeholder-specific OKR views. Establish saved views for portfolio reviews, product planning, leadership conversations, or team execution so stakeholders can work from consistent perspectives instead of rebuilding filters for every review. 

Native OKRs must be enabled through a Digital.ai support ticket for customers adopting the capability in 26.1. 

The takeaway 

Enterprise agility requires more than moving work faster. It requires continuously deciding whether teams are working on the things most likely to advance the organization’s goals.  Digital.ai Agility 26.1 makes that connection more explicit by bringing OKRs into the same environment as enterprise planning and execution, linking strategic outcomes to work, and allowing roadmaps to be organized around Objectives, Key Results, and planned releases. That changes the planning conversation. Instead of asking only, “Are we delivering what we planned?” organizations can increasingly ask, “Is what we are delivering moving the outcomes we planned for?”