Microsoft retired Viva Goals on December 31, 2025. If you're reading this while evaluating what comes next, you're in good company — thousands of organizations are in the same position.
Here's the advice nobody else is giving you: don't just replace Viva Goals. Replace the architecture.
Why Viva Goals failed
Viva Goals failed for the reason most OKR tools fail, amplified by Microsoft's specific context. The product tracked goal syntax — OKRs, in this case — inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It integrated with Teams, Planner, and Viva Insights. It had a usable interface and the credibility of the Microsoft brand.
What it couldn't do was answer the question that mattered: is the work happening inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem actually moving the goals?
That's not a Microsoft problem. That's a category problem. Viva Goals was built on the assumption that goal visibility creates goal execution. It doesn't. Goals that exist in one system and work that exists in another — even when they're connected by integrations — can't give you real-time traceability. Integrations move data, not accountability.
The tool that replaced Viva Goals for most organizations will have the same structural limitation if you let it.
The mistake most evaluations make
The standard evaluation process for Viva Goals replacements looks like this:
- List the features of Viva Goals you were using
- Find tools that replicate those features
- Select the one with the best UX and pricing
- Migrate your OKRs into the new system
This process will produce a new tool that has the same architecture — goal layer on top, work layer below, integrations in between — and the same execution gap in twelve months.
The better evaluation process starts with a different question: why did our strategy fail to execute? Not: "which features did we use?"
The questions worth asking
Before you pick a replacement, ask your CoS or COO three questions:
1. "What percentage of our goals last quarter had a named single owner?" If the answer is less than 70%, the execution gap isn't a tooling problem. It's an ownership problem. A new tool won't solve it unless it structurally enforces single ownership.
2. "Could anyone in leadership, on a given Monday morning, say which work was actively moving our top three KRs?" If the answer is no — if the answer required a status meeting to find out — the gap between goals and work wasn't being bridged. The new tool needs to bridge it natively.
3. "When a KR turned amber, how long did it take leadership to identify the root cause?" If the answer was "at the quarterly review" or "someone raised it in the leadership sync," the gap cost you 4–8 weeks of lead time. The new tool should make root causes visible in the system, not in the meeting.
What an actual replacement looks like
The architecture that closes these gaps has three properties:
Single-owner goals, structurally enforced. Not just a field — a system design that makes shared ownership the exception requiring justification, not the default. Every goal: one accountable owner. Contributors: explicit, separate.
Native work layer. Work items live in the same system as the goals they're supposed to move. Not synced. Not integrated. The same system. When work stalls, goals surface it. When goals turn amber, leadership can drill to the work — and see who owns it, what its current state is, and whether the right capacity is behind it.
Bandwidth accounting. New initiatives require naming the capacity they consume. The system surfaces when adding a new goal creates an overcommitment. Leadership approves bets with full visibility into what they cost.
The honest evaluation criteria
| What to check | What to ask | What a good answer looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Goal ownership | Is shared ownership possible? Is single ownership enforced? | Single owner is the default; shared requires explicit override |
| Work connection | Where do work items live? Are they native or integrated? | Native — same system, not linked |
| Root cause visibility | When a KR is amber, how do I find out why? | Drill from goal to work items in seconds, without a meeting |
| Bandwidth | Can I see who's overcommitted before approving a new initiative? | Yes — capacity view shows allocations per person |
The Vindaris position
We built Vindaris on the architectural premise that Viva Goals and its peers got wrong: goals and the work that proves them belong in one system, not two. We're goal-syntax-agnostic — bring your OKRs, KPIs, OGSM, EOS Rocks, whatever you were running in Viva Goals. The framework is yours. What we own is the layer that connects every goal to traceable work — and surfaces where the connection has broken before the quarter ends.
The migration from Viva Goals is a chance to solve the problem Viva Goals never solved. Take it.