SMART goals: A project management tool

by Ali Jamal Jomeh

Setting goals and objectives is an important part of every organization, as they serve as a guide in terms of what they want to achieve, making them deeply inherent in project, program and portfolio management. Goals and objectives contribute to the successful development of a project’s initiation, planning, implementation and closing phase as well as the guidance of the project team’s operations towards achieving all the agreed upon goals within the scope, time, quality and budget standards. Evidently, an appropriate goal setting technique is needed in order to successfully accomplish the above, which is where SMART goals enter the picture. The purpose of this article is to fully elaborate the idea behind the SMART goals, in which context the technique is to be used, how to apply it and the limitations of it.

SMART is an effective goal setting technique in which the acronym stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound. The difference between normal and SMART goals is that normal goals are simply what you aim to achieve, while SMART goals include finer details in the equation such as resources, deadlines and potential roadblocks along the way. SMART goals are to be formulated in regard to these five principles, where the idea is that every project goal must adhere to the SMART criteria to be effective, and thus successful. Therefore, a key element in the success of a project relies on setting SMART goals, as it is designed to provide structure and guidance throughout a project and help answer how the project can contribute to the purpose based on relevant success criteria. If managers have nebulous, equivocal goals, the project will not end up as envisioned. Thus, the technique enables managers to clearly define and understand the purpose and goals of a project, program, or portfolio. While this technique is not only applicable in a professional context, but also in any projects of private nature, it is typically applied in project management in the planning phase of a project, as the project scope including objectives is defined here in accordance with the international standard ISO21500.

Application of SMART goals

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