Goal Setting

The Effective Manager helps his report to create challenging, inspirational goals that will help the individual develop and grow. Goal setting can be difficult as the intersection must be found between the desires and interests of the individual and the needs of the organization.

Goals must always be SMART:

• Simple
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Realistic
• Timely

In most organizations goals feed directly into performance reviews and salary adjustments. It is therefore important to clearly define what success will look like when defining a goal. This will enable objective performance evaluation when the review cycle comes around.

An example of a well constructed goal is as follows:

Deliver feature X to the independent test team by 3-Oct-07 with zero open severity 1 or 2 defects.

This goal explicitly states the required deliverable, the expected quality, and when the deliverable is due. This goal can be evaluated in a very objective way.