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Objectives or Goals?
January 22, 2011 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Definitions
Objectives or Goals?
By Barry Otterholt
The terms objectives and goals seem to be interchangeable in many management discussions. The two terms are very different, and both are essential and fully compatible in results-oriented project management.
Objectives drive the long term outcomes of the project. They reflect the overarching vision and expectations of the project sponsor and key stakeholders. Work streams are formed around objectives, as reflected in the horizontal bars in typical Gantt charts. Interim deliverables provide a way to control the project, but seldom yield value to the customer, who must wait to gain value until all work has been completed and the very last deliverable has been accepted.
A project objective may be something like “Make our line of business more profitable by cutting costs by 20% and increase revenues by 45% within two years.”
Goals drive the short term outcomes of the project. They reflect the installments of value en route to reaching the overarching vision and stakeholder expectations. These installments of value - often referred to as showcase results - stand on their own. They are real results, delivering real benefits to real people. They would stand even if the project was subsequently canceled.
A goal may be something like: “Cut costs by 5% and increase profits by 15% within six months in the Southwest region.” Upon reaching that goal, the lessons learned could be applied and the rollout of the benefits to the broader national store base would be smoother.
If the Gantt chart had a mechanism for showing goals, you would see them a vertical bar with a very short duration, overlapping the horizontal bars.
Objectives and goals should all be measurable. Neither should be ambiguous. Having goals allows you to think in terms of something more within your reach. You don’t get overwhelmed as with the higher level objectives. You can say “Let’s all rally around [you put in your goal here] and I bet we could get it done.”
Objectives are the compass heading for the overarching vision. Goals entice the day-day performance. Both are important. Goals make more sense.
Credit to Harvard University for good discussing of this in the Harvard Business Review on Managing Projects.
Barry Otterholt has been a project management specialist and coach for the past 30 years. He is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC) and a Project Management Professional (PMP). He works with both public and private sector companies in the USA, Europe and Scandinavia. Mr. Otterholt was a Director with Microsoft, a senior consultant with Deloitte Consulting, and a COO with a nationwide consumer electronics enterprise. In 1988 he founded Public Knowledge, LLC to provide independent management and operational support to the public sector. More recently, he founded Stouffer & Company, LLC to provide as-needed project management services to fill an obvious skills gap in both private and public sectors.
Mr. Otterholt is an adjunct professor teaching project management at Northwest University. His essays on project management have been published in PMI newsletters. His runs a blog, Project Management Essays, where he muses about various project management topics. He lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.
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2 people have left comments
To summarize, in my own words:
Objectives: where are we heading?
Goals: how are we going to get there?
To me:
Goal: General statement of aim or purpose – may be qualitative in nature ( say increase sales)
Objective: Quantification (if possible) or more precise statement of the goal (increase sales by 10%)