Unclear goals

Success Problem

Many of project failures are due to a lack of clearly defined objectives and milestones to measure progress.

Impact

The unclearly defined goals pave way for unnecessary confusion and miscommunication and lead to missing important milestones. Without having a properly defined set of goals in hand, a project manager is bound to lose track of where the project is going in terms of cost and time.

Recommendation

An efficient way to tackle this problem is to follow the SMART rules for goal setting. SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound, goals. Specific means that the goal set should be clearly defined to allow numeric measurement of a project progress. The measurement enables the project manager to see how much more work remains and the time it will take. The project goals have to be relevant to the company mission. Timebound goals involve a realistic time frame to be achieved. Each project stage must have a definite deadline.

Category

• Leadership