Projects start from a good idea. We need to take that good idea and crystalize it into something a team can work on to deliver. Project objectives are what we use to do that. They help the team understand what needs to be delivered and track progress throughout the project. We set objectives as part of the project initiation phase and they form an important part of planning and scheduling the work – after all, you can’t schedule what you don’t understand.
Project objectives define success
Project objectives are a set of statements that describe the expected results of the project. They are the tangible deliverables you’re going to see at the end of the project. They are documented in the Project Charter and approved by the project sponsor.
Project success is normally judged on whether you have met the objectives or not, so they are fundamentally important for shaping the direction of the project. Clear objectives help you make progress in the right direction, steer decisions and improve the overall outcomes while reducing scope creep.
Objectives need to be specific, so they contain metrics around how they are going to be achieved and what success looks like for each one. The information you need to create the objectives normally comes from discussing with the sponsor and extracting key points from the business case or project proposal.
If you see a statement that doesn’t include something to measure it by, it’s probably a goal or part of the project’s vision statement. The goals and vision are both higher level descriptions about the intentions of the project – they have their place and are also useful but it’s the objectives that get specific.
Project objectives help with communication
It’s important that everyone on the team, including the project sponsor, project manager and team members, understands what the project is all about. They need to be aligned and working together to achieve the objectives. So you have to be able to articulate and communicate what the project is doing.
Objectives help with that because they are clear statements that anyone can understand. When you’ve got your approved objective list, they can be used in all kinds of project communications from reports to presentations.
As you start to share your objectives with the wider stakeholder community, listen out for the feedback that you get. Are they really clear? Do people outside the day-to-day core project team understand what it is you are working towards? If other people don’t understand the objectives, it’s a sign to rethink how you have phrased them.
How to write effective project objectives
We’ve talked about objectives being specific and including statements around how they are going to be measured, so you might already have realized that we use the SMART criteria for creating effective project objectives.
SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. If your objective can tick all those boxes, you can easily check to see what progress is being made.
Each project objective should relate to one thing so it’s specific to a particular area of project delivery. You should include information on how the objective can be measured. That could be a metric about quality criteria, for example. Objectives should be something the team can actually achieve so they have to be realistic within the settings of the project. It’s great to have lofty ideals, but if you don’t have the budget, time or resource to deliver them, then you need to scale back your objectives to something you can do! Finally, objectives need to be time-boxed, so include a reference to when the objective needs to be achieved by, or the time period it will take.
Let’s take an example.
Your project is to implement earned value management processes across the project delivery teams because you’re doing work on projects that mandates the use of EVM. We can craft an objective for that initiative like this:
- Launch the new EVM process to [number of staff] employees in the [name of team] by [date] to support the projects that require EVM tracking.
You might be able to include financial targets or technical requirements in your objectives to make them even more specific.
How many objectives should you have?
How many project objectives you have very much depends on the size and scale of the project. A small project might need one solitary objective that adequately describes the full scope. A long program would need several, covering all aspects of the work, perhaps broken down by phase or year.
A good rule of thumb is to go for three to five objectives. You don’t need one for every deliverable as your Project Charter will also include a list of deliverables that details the outputs of the project.
You should be tracking progress against the objectives on a regular basis and reporting that to the project board. At the end of the project, compare what was achieved against what was planned. You might find things have shifted a bit, and that could be acceptable – the change control process helps shape the project as it evolves, so you can always adapt objectives if they need to be amended as you go.
Next steps
Being able to articulate and document project objectives is crucial to getting your project off to a good start, and that’s why we cover it in our Project Management Fundamentals training. During the course, we have the time to talk about how to frame objectives and we can share examples with delegates, often using their real projects as discussion points.
Once you’ve created project objectives a few times, you’ll find it easier to do for future projects. And if you need a hand getting started, or training your team in how to get the basics of project management right, our Fundamentals course is the perfect starting point.