Managermind

If people start new projects, and we are talking about software projects (e.g. you can imagine some Internet start-up), the final result and even success of one of such projects is often only hardly predictable or even not predictable at all. It means your project can satisfy you very soon or it can brings you only much headache. To avoid any headache it es very important to be clear abut the goals of you project in every stage.

I maybe appears as nothing new for you eyes, cause every project seems to have goals naturally. But is it so? I often meet people who say: “Let’s to this, or let’s do that”! But only few of them can clearly define the benefits and the goals they await from their ideas. Many people (including myself in the past) starts some project, but are not really sure about the goals of their projects. Such projects are often end with headache. That it the experience of humanity not only my.

From basics of business studies we know that goals should always be defined properly. Even more I say that every project manager or better every member of project, has to be concerned with goals of the project in every stage of that project. Than goals begin to serve us as references of project status. Every time you see what is already works fine, what part of project are good and which of parts have to be done next.

The are several kind of goals. The main goal of a project is often synonym for benefit. But people starting the project are often have only fussy idea about benefit they will have. Start every project with definition of the overall goal for project. You should like this goal. Having clear goal in mind provides long-range motivation!

As one big project has his sub-project and sub-tasks, so it is of course necessary to define clear goals of every sub-project and every sub-task. And if one project should be implemented by a team, it is very important that the whole team knows the goals at every stage! And even more, the team at it self should be able to define goals of sub-tasks, like every member of project have to define his personal goals by working on sub-tasks.

Also don’t forget that time is more than money! Time is life! So don’t waste your time and make sure that every goal definition has a time constraint! Ever!

But the most important thing on goals is, the ability to change them! Don’t cling to Goals you’re defined month ago. If after some progress you see new opportunities or impasses which makes the goals of yesterday looks silly. So don’t be like the average manager in a big company feel free to accommodate the goals for successes of tomorrow!

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