Many profitable projects fail, not due to the provision of poor quality services or an unclear vision when it comes to the original product but mainly because the project implementation plan lacks the necessary clarity to ensure business success or lacks clearly defined and analyzed objectives. We therefore provide you some key tips on how to set clear goals for your project to ensure its success.

Whether you are already managing a project or developing one, you should make sure you have the answers to the following questions before you kick off your action plan.

• What are the foundations upon which your project is considered successful?
• What are your project milestones? (Set specific deadlines for approvals, reviews and evaluations)
• After answering these questions, you will have a clear picture of the objectives and methodology of the project.

Project goals

Setting objectives for the project will help you:

• Ask the right questions to gather information from business owners/business partners.
• Prioritize the project’s requirements based on their relevance to business operations.
• Leave room for changes in the design once the project kicks off.
• Obtain a clear set of key performance indicators to measure the success of the project.

How do you define project objectives?

If you can understand your goals without resorting to technical terms, and if these goals can be measured, you are moving in the right direction, which is actually a simple and easy process

Here follow examples of poorly drafted objectives:

“I want to be the first in the Middle East.”

This sentence is very broad because the project can contribute to this goal but will not lead on its own to the accomplishment of this objective.

“I want users to talk about our project.”

This sentence is better than its predecessor, but it is still broad and unclear.

“I want to attract more registered users to our site.”

This sentence features a clear and measurable objective, but it focuses only on one step of the process, so it is rather confined.

The correct objectives of the project are as follows:

• Increase the percentage of registered users by 25%
• Increase sales by 12%
• Increase the number of visitors to the site to 10,000 visitors per day.