A project has a beginning and an end, but without an objective, it’s a rudderless ship. To steer your project successfully and land in a safe harbor, you’re going to have to define your project objectives.
What Are Project Objectives?
Project objectives define the critical steps that must be taken to successfully execute a project plan. Project objectives can be tangible deliverables or intangible milestones, but they should always be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound) and related to your broader project goals.
Project objectives allow you to communicate with your team and outline what individuals are responsible for what objectives to better meet stakeholder quality expectations. Your objectives should contain KPI metrics such as budget, quality and how long it takes to finish the project.
To keep track of project objectives, you’ll need a robust project management tool such as ProjectManager. ProjectManager is project management software that offers professional project tracking tools such as Gantt charts, task lists, calendars and real-time dashboards. ProjectManager allows you to track, manage and control project objectives with ease. Get started for free.
Before we learn how to write project objectives, we need to define terms. Many confuse the concept of project objectives with related project management concepts such as project goals, deliverables and milestones.
What Are Project Goals?
Project goals are high-level statements that can be somewhat vague. They do, however, provide overall context for what the project is set to achieve and how it aligns with business goals.
There are different types of project goals such as performance goals, time goals (referring to start and end dates) and resource goals. These three types of project goals compete with one another so a variable with one will impact the others.
While project managers are responsible for managing individual projects they’re assigned to, their project goals and objectives aren’t usually defined by them, but instead it’s a teamwork that usually involves the organization’s project management office (PMO), a team of project managers, program managers and project portfolio managers.
Project Objectives vs. Project Goals
Objectives are much more specific and straightforward as they influence every decision in the project. Project objectives can also be defined as the steps that need to be taken to achieve a high-level view of project goals.
Project Objectives vs. Project Milestones
Project milestones mark an important point in your project, often marking the beginning of a new project phase. There can be as many milestones in your project plan as you see fit. They’re beneficial as they break down your project plan into more digestible parts.
Project Objectives vs. Project Deliverables
Project deliverables are the outputs of your project activities. There can be as many project deliverables as you need in your project. Project deliverables take many forms, such as a product, service or even a finished infrastructure project.
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SMART Goals Template
Use this free SMART Goals Template for Word to manage your projects better.
Types of Project Objectives
There are many kinds of objectives when managing a project, program or portfolio of projects. Five of the more common objectives are financial, performance, quality, business and compliance. Let’s take a moment to look more closely at these project objectives.
- Financial Objectives: These measure the financial health or change in an organization or project. They help a business track its financial progress and measure its success or failure while executing projects and programs. Some examples of financial objectives include revenue, cost, profit, cash flow and investment.
- Performance Objectives: These are goals with specific results that managers or employees are expected to achieve within a certain time frame. The performance objectives can be long or short term and these objectives can assess everything from efficiency, productivity and revenue to customer satisfaction.
- Quality Objectives: These are long-term, measurable goals that companies set to make sure products and services are meeting quality standards. This can help to improve the value of a product or service as well as processes and create action plans to meet quality policies and satisfy customers.
- Business Objectives: Some common business objectives are tracking profitability, employment retention, market share, sales and the customer base. This will help guide a business in identifying its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities.
- Compliance Objectives: These objectives help the organization’s employees and management stick to relevant laws and regulations, rules and standards. Compliance can be achieved by designing, developing and implementing policies, processes and procedures.
Why Are Project Goals and Objectives Important?
Undoubtedly, effective project goals and objectives are important. The clearer they are, the more likely they will be achieved. Plus, your projects, programs and project portfolios will be that much easier to manage.
As stated above, project goals define the overall direction of a project while objectives are crucial as they offer a way to structure the project execution and validate its success. Think of these objectives as the guidelines that your project must follow. They steer you through every aspect of the project and its phases. They offer project managers measurable targets to hit and make teams understand what’s expected of them.
How to Write SMART Project Objectives and Goals
Each project objective needs to meet the SMART criteria. This acronym will guide you to effective objectives.
How? By making sure each objective is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. That means defining the objective and making sure that there’s a metric to measure its progress so you can tell if it’s meeting your baseline expectations.
Related: Goal-Setting and Tracking Templates for Excel and Word
Your project objectives must be achievable or they’ll be impossible to reach, resulting in wasted time and resources. Make sure to be realistic with your objectives and ensure they are relevant to both the project and the organizational strategy of the business.
Lastly, your objective must have a deadline through a time constraint; it can’t be open-ended. It could be time-bound by months, weeks or days depending on the specifics of your project.
Smart Goals Template
SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. Using this framework helps to create more impactful objectives. Use this free SMART goals template for Word to get started.
Project Goals and Objectives Examples
To better understand project goals and objectives, let’s look at some examples across several industries.
1. Construction
Project Goal: Increase safety on the job site.
Project Objectives: Setting project safety standards, creating safety plans and communicating about safety with employees.
2. Manufacturing
Project Goal: Create efficiencies to boost productivity.
Project Objectives: This can include reducing waste, identifying roadblocks and implementing process improvements.
3. Professional Services
Project Goal: Acquire new skills to deepen understanding of work.
Project Objectives: Creating training materials and programs for staff and seeking to expand knowledge of the work sector.
4. Marketing
Project Goal: Generate more high-quality leads.
Project Objectives: Apply search engine optimization to target an audience that fits the product or service, tailor content to attract this audience and create campaigns to capture emails for sales.
5. Customer Satisfaction
Project Goal: Increase the overall satisfaction level for customers by submitting support tickets through the website.
Project Objective: Implement a new online ticketing system by a certain date to achieve ticket response times of no more than an hour
Now, run it through SMART: is it specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound? If it meets these criteria, then it’s a SMART project objective.
In terms of the goal, how will it be reflected in performance, time and resources? You’ll also want to consider if this goal is in alignment with the corporate strategy.
6. New Product
Project Goal: Create a new product to be launched at the beginning of next quarter such as a pair of shoes.
Project Objectives: In this case, there are several project objectives related to that goal. Here are some project objectives examples.
- Conduct market research about the preferences of your target market
- Develop a product vision
- Create a prototype of the final product
- Test it for performance with athlete focus groups
- Create the final version of the product
7. Sales
Project Goal: Increase sales by 30 percent in the next quarter.
Project Objectives: In this case, there are several project objectives related to the goal. Here are some project objectives examples.
- Use new strategies to increase leads from the marketing team by 10 percent
- Hire two new sales representatives
- Launch a loyalty rewards program
- Open one new distribution channel by the beginning of next quarter
The free template lists these goals in one column and in the next a series of questions to help explain how those goals apply to the objective. Then there’s space for the answers.
How to Track Project Goals and Objectives: Tips and Best Practices
Setting up goals and objectives is only the beginning. These must be tracked to ensure that they are being met. The following are some times for tracking project goals and objectives.
Define the Purpose of the Project Before Drafting Goals and Objectives
The project purpose is the fundamental reason for the project. It’s even bigger than project goals and objectives. It will answer why the project is happening and encapsulate the desired outcome or result that the project aims to achieve.
Make a Gap Analysis to Gauge the Potential Impact of Project Goals and Objectives
A gap analysis is a process that assesses the performance of a business or unit to determine if it’s meeting its objectives. Therefore, it’s a critical tool in ensuring that project goals and objectives and working as planned.
Review Project Goals and Objectives During the Kickoff Meeting
Involve the project stakeholders and the project team members, clients and external stakeholders. This ensures that everyone is on the same page. Team members will also help the project managers determine whether goals and objectives are feasible, clients need to agree so there are clear expectations
Establish Project Controls and Use Project Tracking Tools
To ensure that goals and objectives are met, work must be monitored closely and ideally in real time. To do this, use project management tracking tools such as dashboards for a high-level overview and reports for more detail and to share with stakeholders.
Make Project Reports Regularly
Project reports are not a one-time thing. Project managers should make regular reports on progress, variance and more to better direct the project, understand if goals and objectives are being met and keep stakeholders informed.
What Project Management Templates Can Help Monitor Project Objectives?
Project management software is ideal for monitoring project goals and objectives, but for those who aren’t ready to upgrade, many free project management templates for Excel and Word can help. We have over 100 free templates, including the following for monitoring project objectives.
Gap Analysis Template
Use this free gap analysis template for Excel to build an action plan to get an organization from its current state to the desired future one. This can help set up the achievement of project goals while monitoring their progress.
Progress Report Template
This free progress report template for Word compares where a project is against where the plan expected it to be at this point. This is an essential tool to monitor the project objectives to ensure that they’re on track.
Project Status Report Template
A project status report captures the current standing of the project. This free project status report template for Excel captures the project’s health and its progress to keep managers and stakeholders informed.
ProjectManager for Better Project Objectives
If you’re looking to define and achieve your project objectives, you need a dynamic project management tool. ProjectManager is work and project management software that tracks your objectives and goals with real-time metrics on our dashboard. With our software, SMART goals are easy to establish, track and achieve.
Filter reports to show the data you want and generate shareable reports for stakeholders with just one click. Utilize our resource management tools to balance your workload and keep the project on track. Our online Gantt charts schedule over a timeline and can be easily edited by dragging and dropping start and due dates.
More About Project Objectives
What is your project about? The project objective states this before the project initiation. It will be a document you return to over and over again in the project to stay the course. This is true whether you’re working waterfall or within an agile framework.
The project objective is essential as it’s designed to help your team, the stakeholders (especially as they request changes) and the project manager. If you want that project objective to be as effective as possible, watch this short video by our resident project management expert, Jennifer Bridges, PMP.
Here’s a screenshot for your reference.
Pro Tip: Don’t neglect business objectives. If the objective of the project isn’t aligned with the company strategy, then it’s not going to be effective.
Thanks for watching!
Transcription:
Today, we’re talking about how to write effective project objectives every time. Well, I find sometimes people struggle with writing objectives because they get them confused with goals and even the vision. So I wanna start by clarifying what each one of these terms means.
So the vision statement is the highest level statement. What it’s doing, it’s showing direction and aspiration. It may or may not even be achieved, but the goals are, they’re more vague, but they’re still high level, they provide the overall context for what the project is to achieve and aligns with the business goals.
The objectives are a lower level statement, they describe the desired result of the project and they describe specific tangible products and deliverables that the project will deliver. So the goals are more vague and the objectives are a little bit more specific.
So why do we care about effective objectives?
Well, managing a project calls for clear objectives. The more clear you can get your objectives, then the more likely you are to achieve them. So they’re used to structure the project and validate your success. So how do we make those objectives more effective?
Well, we use the SMART technique. So SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. So when we talk about projects and we talk about goals and objectives, Here’s an example.
So if a goal for a project could be to increase the overall satisfaction of customers submitting support tickets through the website, that would be the overall goal of the project.
So one specific objective would be to implement a new online ticketing system by August 1st to achieve ticket response times of no more than one hour. So let’s check it out. So is it SMART?
So it’s very specific, it tells you exactly what’s going to happen, by what time, and what results you’re going to gain. It’s also measurable. You can measure the ticket response times, and make sure they don’t exceed one hour.
They’re also achievable by using this ticketing system, they are able to be achieved and they’re realistic for your team. And also time-bound, you know you’re going to implement this by August 1st. So now you can see the difference between the goal and how the objective helps support that goal.
If you need a project planning tool that can help you document your objectives, structure your project, and validate your success, then sign up for our software now at ProjectManager.
