Bob McGannon and I talk about when project scope changes might trigger the need to revise your project definition.

Want to make project goals achievable? Make sure they’re clearly articulated, supported by key stakeholders and involve available skills. That’s no guarantee though, because other conditions can impact their achievability. Here are items to help ensure your project goals are reasonable and motivate your project team.

• A fully understood product approach. Goals become achievable when team members understand what is expected of them. Team members are more confident when they use familiar approaches to produce  project deliverables. But businesses must innovate to remain competitive and that introduces unfamiliar approaches that team members must embrace. This requires time and specialized resources to develop and practice new approaches. To support innovation and achievable goals, include funding and time in your project to help the team assimilate new approaches.

• The tool to measure success is understood. Project goals are achievable when management and the team understand how success will be measured. There are two aspects to this. First, with clear measures of success, the team can identify incremental improvements. Second, understanding metrics supports innovation, because measurement can highlight improvements that help achieve project goals.

• Applicability to business processes is understood. Project staff is more likely to understand project goals when they’re specifically tied to existing business processes. That understanding helps them focus their project effort and improves the chance that project goals will be achieved. What if new products or processes aren’t associated with existing processes? To help the team understand these items, draw parallels between existing processes and the new product and processes. Where that isn’t possible, early work to develop new processes helps teams understand the direction they need to take to achieve defined goals.

• Practical timelines. Project team members are more likely to support practical, non-arbitrary deadlines. A practical deadline means the timeframe reflects durations like those for prior projects. However, a tight deadline due to a legitimate need for the business can be reasonable, as long as management gives the team permission to use new approaches to meet the deadline. Review the rationale for proposed timelines with team members to make aggressive deadlines believable to motivated teams. (Think Apollo 11 landing on the moon prior to the end of the decade!)

To learn more, check out my Project Management Foundations course

Initial project objectives can vary from precise to vague. It’s important to ensure objectives meet the sponsor’s expectations and fit the needs of the business and key stakeholders.

Many project managers use SMART objectives, which stand for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-constrained. But SMART objectives are only the beginning. Here are other considerations for appropriate project objectives:

• Aligned with strategy. Strategy is implemented through business change projects, but that doesn’t mean all projects are strategic. You can ensure that your project is viable and its project objectives are appropriate by understanding your organization’s strategy and by making sure that your project’s objectives and the way you achieve them don’t detract from that strategy. For example, don’t fall into the trap of using old, “reliable” technology to implement a project when the strategic direction is to use more powerful, future-proofed tools. While it may take longer, supporting the organization’s strategy is probably more important in the long run.
• Scheduled mindfully. While SMART objectives address achievability, that doesn’t mean the objective is appropriate given the current workload your critical project team members are handling. Other projects and operational responsibilities may create excessive expectations for team members. To determine what is truly achievable, you need to identify the current demand for critical team members along with the demands your project will place on them.
• The right approach. As project objectives can vary, the approach for achieving them varies as well. Having well-defined requirements that are unlikely to change and needing to support specific milestones indicate a waterfall approach is more appropriate. Conversely, loosely-defined requirements and tight deadlines indicate that agile approaches may be best. Ensure your project objectives are realistic by creating plans to deliver your project based on available staff, required timeframes and the nature of your requirements.
• Mindful of change management. While businesses need to move fast, people are limited in the magnitude of change they can successfully manage, procedurally and emotionally. Monitor the degree of change you are expecting of your business to ensure your objectives are realistic and achievable.