Project Goals and Objectives

Goals/Visions and objectives/mission objectives are statements that describe what the project will accomplish, or the business value the project will achieve.
1. Goals/Visions
  1. are high-level statements that provide the overall context for what the project is trying to accomplish.
  2. It is important to understand business and project goal statements.
  3. Goals are important from a business perspective and must support business goals.
  4. Project Goals:
    1. statements about the general aims or purposes of projects.
    2. broad and show long-range (in projects timeline) outcomes.
    3. Used primarily in policy making and general program planning
  5. characteristics of a goal statement
    1. The goal should reference the business benefit in terms of cost, speed and/or quality.
    2. Even if the project is not directly in support of the business, there should be an indirect tie.
    3. If there is no business value to the project, the project should not be started.
    4. may take many projects over a long period of time to achieve the business goal of an organisation.
  6. Example: “Increase the overall satisfaction levels for clients calling to the company helpdesk.”
Objectives:
1. Brief and clear statements that describe the desired outcomes or deliverables of the project
2. Must be measurable (acceptance criteria).
3. Must fit within the overall goal
4. Attention is focused on the specific types of deliverables
  Annotations:
  - that projects are expected to produce and deliver at the end of the project.
5. Objectives are intended results of activities and outcomes.
6. Objectives specify what is expected and describe what should be measured and assessed; outcomes are products or services produced and are the objects of assessment.
7. Characteristcs
  1. more concrete and specific than the goal statement
  2. measurable
  3. achievable and realistic.
  4. time-bound
  5. refer to the deliverables of the project
  6. must address BUSINESS issues
Difference: Obj vs Goal
1. Both terms use the language of outcomes.
2. The characteristic that distinguishes them is the level of specificity.
3. Goals express the intended outcomes in general terms and objectives express them in specific terms.
Deliverables
1. The objectives should also be achieved through the completion of one or more deliverables, which are the items the project team is expected to provide.
2. If an objective cannot be achieved based on the completion of one or more project deliverables, it is probably written at too high a level or perhaps it is an invalid objective for the project altogether.

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Project Goals and Objectives

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	Created by Freda Fung almost 8 years ago