42. No, That’s Not a Goal

I don’t have a statistic to share with you. But close to 100% of the projects I’ve seen fail, get extended, or become more costly than planned fell short in one aspect:

• The goal being pursued is not known.

That is, it’s very common to believe that a project’s goal is to build a certain scope. But that’s not the project’s goal, of course. The scope describes “How” we meet the goal, but it’s not the goal itself.

Then, it often happens that the goal is poorly defined. To align all involved parties, the goal should at least answer the following:

• What is to be achieved
• When it is to be achieved

Eventually, it can include:

• At what cost it is to be achieved

Here’s a poorly defined goal:

• “Build an e-commerce”

Why is it wrong?

• It describes the scope, not the goal.
• It doesn’t determine when it should be concluded.
• We can’t know why it is necessary to build the e-commerce.

Possible variations:

• “Obtain internet sales revenues of $X during period Y.”
• “Establish the brand’s presence on the internet by day X.”

As we can see, when delving into more concrete aspects of the goal, ambiguities that need clarification begin to emerge.

Much of the success or failure of a project, then, is determined by the clarity of the goal we agree to fulfill. The more specific the goal, the better.

The effort required to obtain, clarify, and disambiguate the goal is returned manifold in the form of benefits during the project execution and, especially, at the end. Where we can clearly identify whether the goal was achieved or not.

Corollary: never skimp on efforts to obtain a clear definition of the goal you pursue.

Bonus Track: Tips for Wasting Time

The best things you can do to waste time are:

• Not having a well-defined and visible goal for the entire team.
• Not quantifying your work.
• Arguing over subjective aspects.
• Not documenting your process.