What are Parent and Child Goals?

Click on the goal title > Click on 'Show More' > Scroll down to the bottom of the sidebar

If there are any unfamiliar terms within this article, please consult our glossary

The terms 'Parent' and 'Child' are ones you will see often in Cascade. They refer to the relationship between goals, which is determined by their alignment.

A Parent can be either a goal or a focus area within a plan, while a Child can only be a goal. If a goal sits at the top level of planning, the focus area it is aligned to is its Parent. This top-level goal becomes a Parent when any goals are created in the lower levels beneath it; these new goals are referred to as Child goals.

There are two areas in which you can quickly see the Parent and Child goals of any goal:

The Sidebar: Click on the title of a goal to open the sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen. Click on 'Show More', then scroll down to the bottom of the sidebar. You will see a list of any existing Parents and Children. You can align this goal to new Parents directly from the sidebar by clicking '+Add Additional Alignment', or add Children by clicking on the +Add button to create a new Child goal.
The Goal Hub: Click on the title of a goal to open the sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen. Click on the circular button with an arrow icon inside it in the top-left of this sidebar. Within the Goal Hub, click on the Alignment. Just like with the sidebar view, you can align this goal to new Parents directly from the Goal Hub by clicking '+Add Additional Alignment', or add Children by clicking on the +Add button to create a new Child goal.

When creating a series of aligned goals, it is important to pay attention to the Tracking Types at each level. The lowest level should be assigned the Manual Tracking type, meaning that you will be able to manually add progress to these goals. All goals above the lowest level, regardless of how many levels there are, should be set to track as either a Child Goal Average or a Sum of Child Goal, depending on your reporting requirements. This ensures that the progress you manually add to the lowest level will roll up through all of the levels above it and update the progress of those goals accordingly.

Using Child Goal Average or Sum of Child Goal for Parent goals means that you won't have to duplicate your efforts by entering the same progress multiple times across multiple levels, nor will you need to conduct any adding or averaging yourself as Cascade will calculate the progress for you.

Should you have any further questions, or this article does not complete your help request, please log in to the GFW client support area and lodge a support ticket using this link

This article was written by Lauren Galbraith-Gould.
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