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Defining SMART Objectives
processes & methodologies
January 22, 2004, 10:18 PM
More wisdom from Matt on project management, this time on the topic of defining good objectives.
First off, Objectives need to be distinguished from Mission Statements or other expressions of general direction. When a team or organization expresses their mission, this is an important tool for maintaining a joint understanding of what the group is trying to accomplish by staying together and how every individual fits into the larger group purpose. Because the purpose of Mission Statements is to provide direction, there's not necessarily a requirement that the mission ever actually be accomplished.
Objectives are different. Objectives do need to be accomplished if a project is to be considered a success. The purpose of objectives is to provide a definition of that success and to provide it up front, so that all project team members understand what the group needs to do. Good objectives have five important properties. To remember them, PMs say that good objectives need to be SMART:
- Specific—Objectives need to describe particular actions and results in quantifiable terms. For example, let's imagine a widget factory manager who is given the very vague objective from higher up to "increase production". To make this objective more specific, she might change it to "increase widget output by 3%".
- Measurable—This means that each objective must have some sort of mechanism in place to check the extent to which it is getting achieved. If our factory manager doesn't already have something in place to count the number of widgets produced, then she'd better find something to do so.
- Achievable—The objective needs to be possible to accomplish with a reasonable time and energy investment from all team members. This may seem obvious, but there are plenty of times that impossible objectives get set, often because the manager who set them didn't know enough to realize they were impossible and didn't consult with anyone who did. Our factory manager may wish to meet with workers and their supervisors to discover whether the 3% output increase is reasonable or not before she imposes it.
- Relevant—The objective must be meaningful to all team members and it must be something they are able to influence. Presumably the factory workers under our manager are able to influence the widget output (although setting individual objectives, like 5 more widgets a day per person, might be even more relevant) but had our manager asked them to "increase profit margins" then she would have been greeted by blank stares. Relevance is, of course, determined by the people the objective is being set for. In a way, it speaks to objectives being user-centered.
- Time-bound—The objective needs a deadline, or no one's going to ever get around to accomplishing it. Our factory manager should change her objective to "increase widget production by 3% in two months" to make it conform to this property.
This article describes each property in a little more detail for the curious.
Though these properties are simple in concept, writing effective objectives is harder than it appears. Make sure you understand the purpose of each property, and don't overlook any. After all, you don't want to wind up with objectives that are SMAT or SMRT.