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Projects need a guiding light. The project's goal statement is that light. A concise goal is the benchmark for project progress and ultimate project success. A useable project goal statement is guided by the characteristics of a SMART goal: Specific and Succinct Measurable Agreed-upon Realistic Time-framed Specific and Succinct: Any goal should describe precisely what the project is to achieve. It should also be short and easy to state. The best goals use verbs and nouns to convey that action is to be taken to develop the deliverables described. For example: "research, design, develop, and build X," or, "procure, install, integrate, and deploy X." Measurable: If there is no way to measure the achievement of the goal, how will you know when you're done? Many times, the words that are used to make the goal specific are also the key measures for the project. For example, one of my favorite goals is, "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth." The specifics of this goal area: Man, moon, earth, alive (safely), end of the decade. These are also the measures by which the entire project was evaluated. Agreed-upon: Particularly on in-house projects (those being conducted by employees who are not actually project managers), agreement on the project goal is critical. Specifically, the people who must supply the resources (people) who will work on the project must agree that the project is desirable and that the involvement of their employees is necessary for success. Not everyone in the organization needs to agree with the project but those who can significantly impact it must. Realistic: A project needs to be both possible and appropriate. On the possible side, the skills, knowledge and abilities to actually complete the project successfully should be readily available to the project team. On the appropriate side, the project itself should be something that makes sense for the organization to undertake. Time-framed: Probably one of the easiest parts of the goal to establish the deadline. Very little is ever accomplished without a deadline. This is particularly true of work that is in addition to everything else that you need to do in your day. Building the delivery deadline into the project goal keeps it in front of the team and lets the organization know when they can expect to see the results. As mentioned above, good project goals are short - usually less than 50 words. You should be able to tell someone your project goal in an elevator ride going less than three floors.
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