Goals

Goals are the outcomes your team is working toward, such as "Launch self-serve sign-up" or "Cut page load time in half". You link tasks to a goal, and its progress follows the work by itself, so nobody updates a percentage by hand and everyone can see how close each goal is. Dev reads your vision and current goals in every session, so its advice is framed by where the project is heading. You'll find them under Plan → Goals in the project sidebar.

Set the project's vision

The Vision box at the top of the Goals page describes the end state of the project: what success looks like, in a few sentences. It's one piece of text, up to 5,000 characters.

Type in the box and click away to save it, or press Save vision, which appears once you've changed something. Only a project Maintainer can save the vision.

The vision shows up in three places:

• under the project's name at the top of the project Overview
• in every session, where Dev reads it before it replies
• as the frame for your goals on the Goals page

A good vision is short and concrete enough to settle an argument about what the project is for. The goals below it are the steps toward it.

Add a goal

On the Goals page, press Add goal (on an empty page, New goal). Fill in:

Then press Add goal. Only the title is required, and you can fill in the rest later.

To change a goal, press the pencil (Edit goal) on its card, or click its title, description or success criteria on the card and edit them in place. In the edit dialog, clearing a field removes it.

A goal can depend on one other goal, and its card shows "Depends on:" with that goal's title. DevSpec won't let a goal depend on itself, or create a loop of goals that depend on each other.

Once a goal exists, link tasks to it: its progress comes only from the work linked to it.

Link work to a goal

A goal's progress comes only from the tasks linked to it. Nothing links automatically, so link work as you plan it. There are two ways to do it yourself:

• From the goal. On the Goals page, open a goal with Show details, then press Link work in its Linked work section. Search for a task or brief and click it to link it.
• From the item. On a task's page, press Link goal in its Goals section and choose the goals the work serves.

Linking a brief counts every task in it toward the goal, including items added to the brief later. An item in the brief that has goal links of its own counts toward those goals instead. If one of the brief's items doesn't belong to the goal, open its menu in Linked work and choose Remove from this goal; the brief still counts, that item doesn't. Include again undoes it. For an item you linked directly, the menu offers Unlink from goal.

You don't have to do all of this by hand. Dev can link an item to a goal when it creates or updates it in a session, and your agents can link the items they create or finish. See Tasks.

On the page, you can only link work to a goal that's current. To add work to an achieved or dismissed goal, reactivate it first.

How goal progress is counted

A goal's progress is a count of its linked tasks, updated as the work moves. It's shown under Progress on each current goal on the Goals page, and on the project Overview, as "3 of 8 done", or "3 done · 2 in progress · 8 total" when some of it is underway.

A linked brief counts through its items. A brief with no items yet counts as one piece of work.

Nothing else feeds progress. The success criteria are there for people and Dev to read; DevSpec doesn't score them.

Open Show details on a goal to see every item behind the count, with its status. Items that count because their brief is linked are marked "via" the brief's name.

When a goal is achieved

A goal becomes Achieved in one of two ways:

• By itself. When an item linked to the goal reaches Done, and every other item linked to it is Done or Dismissed, DevSpec marks the goal achieved. A goal with no linked work is never achieved this way.
• By hand. Press Mark achieved (the trophy) on a current goal's card, for example when the outcome was reached some other way.

Either way, the goal shows Achieved with the date, and everyone on the project gets a Goal achieved notification under Activity in the notification bell. Within a day of the goal being achieved, each person sees a burst of gold confetti the next time they open DevSpec, once. If your device is set to reduce motion, the confetti is skipped.

Achieved goals also appear in the project Overview's Project pulse. See Project Overview and Notifications and messages.

Current, achieved and dismissed goals

Every goal has one of three statuses:

To dismiss a goal, press Dismiss on its card and say why. Pick a quick reason (Done a different way, Out of scope now, Replaced by another goal or Other), add a note if you like, and press Dismiss. A reason is required, so anyone reading the goal later knows what happened.

The Goals page shows current goals. Press Show all to include achieved and dismissed goals, and Active only to hide them again. Reactivate on an achieved or dismissed goal moves it back to current and clears its achievement or dismissal.

To change the order of your current goals, use Move up and Move down on each card. The order is used on the Overview and in what Dev sees, so put the goal that matters most at the top.

Ask Dev to manage goals

In a session, you can ask Dev to manage your goals for you. Dev can:

• list goals, or show everything that counts toward one, with each item's status
• create a goal, or change its title, description, success criteria, target date, order or dependency
• mark a goal achieved, dismiss it with a reason, or reactivate it
• split one goal into several new ones, or merge several goals into one
• link tasks to a goal as it creates or updates them

If you ask Dev to make a specific change, it can make it for you. When Dev suggests a change itself, it explains the proposal and waits for your agreement. It can't change the vision; edit that on the Goals page. What Dev can change for you depends on your project role, the same as on the Goals page: a Viewer's request can't change goals.

Dev reads the vision and current goals, with their progress, in every session. So you can ask it things like "which goal is furthest behind?", "what's left for the onboarding goal?" or "does this idea serve any of our goals?". See Dev, your assistant in sessions.

Goals also show up elsewhere: the Analytics page breaks down where effort went By goal (see Analytics), and your agents can read your goals.

Who can do what with goals

Everyone on a project can see its vision, goals and progress. Changing them depends on your project role:

The same rules apply when you ask Dev to make the change for you. See Organizations, members and roles.