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Business Alignment profile

The Business Alignment profile defines the structure for tracking how engineering work aligns with business priorities. It establishes the investment categories to be used across the organization and specifies the scope and rules for fetching work items relevant to Business Alignment metrics.

At the profile level, you:

  • Define the set of Investment Categories (e.g., Features, Tech Debt, Customer Commitments).
  • Configure the fetch scope to determine which work items should be considered for each category (e.g., by project, integration, or work type).

The actual definition of each category i.e., how work is classified into these categories is handled by engineering managers at the team level in Team Settings, using Filter Sets based on metadata such as labels, issue types, components etc

This two-level setup ensures consistency in reporting across the organization while allowing teams the flexibility to define category logic that reflects their specific context.

Important concepts​

Investment categories​

Investment Categories represent the different strategic areas where engineering effort is invested. Common examples include:

  • Feature Development
  • Technical Debt
  • Customer Commitments
  • Maintenance
  • Bugs or Incidents

These categories are defined at the profile level and shared across all teams. However, each team can define its own logic to classify work items into these categories using metadata-based filters in Team Settings.

Scope of fetching tickets​

Each Investment Category in the Business Alignment profile defines how tickets should be fetched based on specific criteria and hierarchy rules. This ensures that effort is correctly attributed even in nested work structures like epics, stories, and sub-tasks.

You can choose from two high-level modes:

  • Fetch tickets that match the specified conditions: Only the tickets that directly match the condition will be included.
  • Fetch tickets based on the specified conditions and also sub-tickets: Allows for advanced selection based on parent-child relationships.

Advanced selection options​

When using hierarchical fetching, you can choose from the following advanced options:

  • All tickets and all descendents where the condition matches with the parent ticket: Includes the parent ticket and all levels of child tickets (e.g., epics → stories → sub-tasks).
  • Only leaf descendents of tickets where the condition matches with the parent ticket: Includes only the terminal (leaf) child tickets from matched parent tickets. Useful when work is primarily tracked at the leaf level.
  • All tickets and all descendents for an epic: Includes all work items under an epic, regardless of whether the epic itself meets the condition.
  • All tickets and immediate children where the condition matches with the parent ticket: Includes the matched parent ticket and its immediate children (but not deeper levels).

This granularity gives teams flexibility to define fetching logic that aligns with how work is structured and tracked in systems like Jira or Azure Boards, ensuring accurate effort attribution across complex ticket hierarchies.

Relationship between Ranking Categories and Business Alignment metric calculations

The ranking of categories plays a significant role in determining how tickets are allocated to different categories, and subsequently, how Business Alignment calculations are made.

  1. Ticket Metadata for Categories: Categories in the Business Alignment profile are defined based on certain attributes or metadata of tickets. These attributes can include Labels, Components, Priorities, Issue Types, or any other relevant information associated with the tickets in your Issue Management System (e.g., Jira or Azure).

    Example Ticket Metadata:
    Ticket 1: Labels: (abc, def) Priority: (P1)
    Ticket 2: Labels: (abc, def, ghi) with Components: (text, value)
  2. Defining Categories: Categories are defined based on specific criteria related to ticket metadata. In the provided example, let's say you define two categories:
    1. Category 1: Based on the label being abc
    2. Category 2: Based on the component being text
  3. Ticket Allocation to Categories: Now, when you have tickets in your system, they are allocated to categories based on whether they meet the criteria defined for each category. For example:
    1. Ticket 1 belongs to Category 1 because it has the label abc
    2. Ticket 2 can potentially belong to both Category 1 and Category 2 because it meets the criteria for both categories.
  4. Ranking Categories: This is where the ranking of categories comes into play. When a ticket is eligible for multiple categories, the ranking helps determine which category takes precedence or priority. In the provided example:
    1. If Category 1 is ranked higher (e.g., ranked 1), then Ticket 2 will also be allocated to Category 1
    2. If Category 2 is ranked higher, then Ticket 2 will be allocated to Category 2 and it won't be included in Category 1
  5. Allocation Goals and Calculations: After tickets are allocated to Categories, you can set Allocation Goals for each Category. To learn more, Go to Allocation Goals.
  6. Business Alignment Calculations: Once Allocation goals are set, Harness SEI calculates the Business Alignment metric value based on the actual allocation of tickets to categories and the progress made in each category.

Set up the Business Alignment profile​

To create a Business Alignment profile:

  • In your Harness project, go to the SEI module.
  • Navigate to Account Management > Profiles.
  • Select the Business Alignment tab under the profiles section.
  • Click + Business Alignment Profile.
  • Enter a Name for the profile and optional description.
  • Under Investment Categories:
    • Add each category your organization wants to track.
    • Set the ranking order for the investment categories.
  • Under Scope of fetching tickets choose the relevant issue types and apply filters to narrow the computation scope.
  • Click Save.

Once saved, the Business Alignment profile must be associated with one or more Org Trees in your organization. This association determines which teams can access and use the profile.

After association, Engineering Managers within those Org Trees can define category filters at the team level, using their own set of work-item filters based on metadata such as labels, components, or issue types.

Next steps​

  • Define the Business Alignment settings for a team
  • View the Business Alignment dashboard