How to Write a Project Objective for Your Team

What is a project objective?

A project objective is a specific goal you want to achieve at the end of your project. Typically, this is an asset, deliverable or quantifiable result you are looking to fulfill. Specifically, a project objective has 5 components, also known as the SMART system. Created by George T. Doran, the SMART system was developed to help write project objectives.

SMART stands for:

By writing SMART project objectives, you can ensure your team understands the scope of work, has clarity, and buys in on an individual project. 

So how do you write a project objective? Follow these steps.

Identify your objectives

The first place to start is to identify your objectives. You know what your project outcome will look like (in theory) but now it’s time to identify objectives. By having objectives you will be able to ensure that your project objectives are completed.

Identify responsibilities and roles

Who will be in charge of completing this project? Who should be involved in the creation of these objectives? By collaborating together with the team members who will be involved in the project, you can get buy-in and alignment on what needs to be done and more easily set your objectives.

Clarify objectives

A project objective should be brief but concise. You do need to write down every granular detail, this is more about the actionable objective as an overview. Don't spend too much time getting bogged down in the minutia here. Brief, actionable, and concise is the goal at this stage. Try to focus it down to be as specific as possible.

SMART

Make sure your objectives are achievable for you and your team using the SMART method.

Is your goal specific? Your objective should be clear and attainable. For example, "bring in X amount of new users by December."

Is your objective measurable? Will you be able to identify if you succeed? How will you identify success?

Is it a reasonable, realistic, and achievable goal? Evaluate if you and your teams have the bandwidth and ability to accomplish the objective.

Does your objective include a specific window of time? Objectives should have a clear and concise date as to which they will be achieved.

Maintenance

So you've created your objectives, and your team is running and working on the objective at hand. What do you do now? Maintenance! Check in on how your project is flowing to make sure to be able to address any issues that come along the way. In Workast, you can easily view your project via calendar, your main dashboard, in Slack, or with a kanban style board. With so many ways to view your projects, making sure progress is happening is a sinch.

"Being in the digital marketing industry with 100% of our team working remotely, "Workast" has helped define where collaborative work starts!

Our day-to-day collaboration and remote work coordination are spread evenly to our team seamlessly. It is very collaborative and user-friendly; making it easy to track and complete work on time. Workast is the best slack app that unifies all! We use it to upload daily tasks, important files, schedules, notes, and meetings all at once.

We easily define responsibilities, expectations, and deadlines using Workast plus understand our staff's bandwidth and check their capacity to add more tasks on their plates. The team's responsibilities and what action they need to take to reach the goal became visible to everyone involved in the project. Role and accountability help them stay productive, regardless of whether it is an individual or project-based combined work. Above all, Workast empowers our team to make decisions and take ownership and accountability for their targets without any delays. Thanks to Workast!"

Tim Clarke - Director of Sales @ SEOBlog.com

Do you have an example of a project objective you've successfully implemented and achieved in your organization? We'd love to see it! Send us a tweet or drop us a line for a chance to get featured on our blog!