Why Microsoft Viva Goals Failed (and What to Use Instead)
Microsoft retired Viva Goals on December 31, 2025, about three years after buying the OKR startup Ally.io to build it. For a company the size of Microsoft, shutting down an entire product is rare—and telling. If you used Viva Goals to run OKRs, or you're choosing a new tool now that it's gone, it's worth understanding what went wrong. The reasons say a lot about what actually makes an OKR tool work.
What Was Viva Goals?
Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a dedicated OKR platform, in 2021 and relaunched it in 2022 as Viva Goals—one module inside the broader Microsoft Viva employee experience suite, alongside tools like Viva Engage, Viva Insights, and Viva Glint. The idea was to let teams set, track, and align objectives and key results directly inside Microsoft 365 and Teams.
Why It Never Took Off
Microsoft didn't say much publicly, but the pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched a good idea get lost inside a bigger platform. A few things stand out:
- Buried inside a suite. Viva Goals wasn't sold or used as a standalone product. It was one tile in the Viva menu, competing for attention with a dozen other Viva modules. Most people never opened it.
- Licensing complexity. Getting to Viva Goals meant navigating Microsoft 365 and Viva suite licensing, which isn't simple. Organizations that just wanted an OKR tool had to buy into a much bigger, more expensive ecosystem first.
- Built for enterprise IT, not for teams. Viva Goals shipped with enterprise-style admin controls and integrations, but the everyday experience of setting and updating goals stayed clunky. OKRs only work if people actually use them every week, and that takes simplicity, not more configuration options.
- Tied too closely to HR and performance management. Viva Goals sat next to Viva Insights and Viva Glint, tools built for engagement surveys and performance reviews, and was widely framed by analysts as part of Microsoft's performance management push rather than as a lightweight team tool. That framing carries real risk: Gallup research found only 2% of HR chiefs strongly agree their performance management system actually inspires employees to improve. OKRs only work when people update them honestly every week. When a goal tracker feels like it belongs to HR and performance reviews instead of to the team doing the work, people get guarded, updates get sanitized, and the tool stops reflecting what's actually happening.
- Adoption never scaled. Microsoft's own explanation for retiring the product was that usage across the Viva suite didn't scale the way it expected. A goal-tracking tool people don't check regularly quietly turns into shelfware.
The Bigger Lesson
Viva Goals' failure isn't really about Microsoft. It's a reminder that OKR tools succeed or fail based on one thing: do people actually open them every week? A tool bolted onto a giant suite, wrapped in enterprise licensing, and buried behind several other modules will always struggle with that, no matter how much engineering goes into it. Simplicity isn't a nice-to-have for an OKR tool. It's the entire point.
Migrating Off Viva Goals
If your organization exported its data before the shutdown, moving to a new tool doesn't have to be complicated. You mainly need somewhere to re-enter your objectives and key results and start tracking progress again, not a system with the same enterprise overhead you just left behind.
Why Easy OKR Is a Good Replacement
Easy OKR is built around the exact lesson Viva Goals learned the hard way. It's a standalone OKR tool, not one tile buried in a much bigger suite. There's no complex Viva-style licensing to work through first, no dependency on a specific Microsoft 365 tier, and no enterprise sales process to get started. You sign up, set your objectives, and start tracking key results the same day. Because that's the whole product, it stays simple to use every single week, which is the part Viva Goals never quite managed.
The Bottom Line
Microsoft Viva Goals wasn't a bad idea. But it proves that an OKR tool has to be simple, standalone, and genuinely easy to check every week, or people just stop using it. That's exactly the gap Easy OKR is built to fill.