How to Determine Project Objectives
It is very important to identify project objectives and goals at the initial stage of the project. They should be identified and documented in project initiation document or the project charter by the Project Manager (PM) during the initiation phase and later, carried further through the subsequent phases such as planning, execution and closure. Project objectives should be either approved by the relevant stakeholders or be developed collaboratively with the involvement of interested parties. Well defined project objectives will communicate the purpose, direction, value and also enable measurement of project progress.
Organizing the project objectives by classifying them into the specific groups/ types will help PM in his/her thought process and ensure that all important objectives are identified.
Typically there could be many more groups (like Productivity, Efficiency, Compliance, Risks etc.), however they can easily be fit into any of the above 5 broad types with a bit of analysis.
A structured thought process or brainstorming sessions with a holistic approach, would help in finding out what should be achieved through the project and assist in not missing out any core project objectives. The statements of objective should be precise and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound), so that they will meet their purpose.
More often we notice that the importance and priority of all the objectives are not equal. They are dependent upon the interested parties (like: User, Developer, Government, Management etc.). However, the Project Manager should be able to find out the priorities realistically in an unbiased way, for the overall interest of the project. Priority based or importance based weights are assigned to various objectives in order to measure the overall outcome of the project. It is recommended that PM will have the rationale for assigning the weights. The rationale should be based on the overall project achievement conceived by the relevant stakeholders, but conceptualized by the PM.
The following table shows a few objectives in a Software Development & Implementation Project and summarizes the above discussions.
