Smart goals

We all want to set clear and understandable goals (tasks) for ourselves and our team. There are several criteria for this, which are collected in the English abbreviation SMART (smart):

Letter	English term	Russian term
S	Specific	Accurate and specific
M	Measurable	Measurable
A	Achievable	Achievable
R	Relevant	Relevant
T	Time bound / framed	Goals with a deadline

Specific - accurate and specific goals

There is such a wonderful law of Murphy , which in our case can be formulated as follows: "If there are several ways to understand a task, then someone will definitely understand it incorrectly." Therefore, when setting goals, it is necessary to make them as accurate and specific as possible in order to exclude various interpretations from the director and the performer. It will also be a good practice to write goals in writing, either on paper or in electronic form, since there are many programs and web services now.

Wrong	Right
Make layout on www.site.com cross-browser	Website www.site.com should be the same in browsers IE6 +, Opera 6+, Firefox 2+
Make a layout on the website www.site.com valid	Site site must be fully validated by w3c.org validators (http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools)

Accuracy and concreteness does not mean at all that it is necessary to paint every term in detail in detail. Just need to agree on their values.

Measurable targets

Measuring goals brings several bonuses at once. Firstly, if there is a numerical indicator of achievement of the goal, then you know exactly what stage of the work you are at and how much you have left. Secondly, you know exactly how much you have passed, sometimes it is useful to look back to raise your motivation. And thirdly, upon completion of the work, you will be able to calculate how many percent your goal has been achieved.

Wrong	Right
Increase traffic to the site	Attendance at the site should be 2000 hosts per day.
Make every visitor buy more	Increase the average check amount by 10%

Achievable - attainable goals

Each person has a set of knowledge and skills, so for different people it is necessary to select the appropriate tasks. In accordance with the skills and knowledge of the person, tasks can be categorized:

• Unreachable: when setting such tasks, the performer with them will certainly not cope. For example, you cannot draw 1000 quality layouts for different sites in a day. Such tasks in front of subordinates can not be put.
• Difficult to achieve : to perform such tasks, the performer will need to use all of their knowledge and skills. For example, draw 10 design options for a site per day. Such tasks should be solved by the team, but not all the time - otherwise it will simply burn out. Such tasks should be entrusted, first of all, to experienced and ambitious employees, for whom they will be a unique challenge. The harder it will be to accomplish the task, the more significant the sense of achievement.
• Achievable : these tasks correspond exactly to the level of knowledge and skills of the performer. For example, to draw a site layout design for an approved draft and brief in one day. Such tasks are necessary for a respite between more complex tasks and for developing self-reliance.
• Easily achievable: these tasks do not correspond to the competence of the employee and it will not be very interesting for him to carry them out. For example, draw a button for a form in a given style for the day. Such tasks, it is desirable to assign only new employees to integrate into the team.

The general conclusion can be drawn as follows: it is necessary to alternate the achievable and hard-to-reach tasks.

Relevant - Relevant Goals

The relevance of goals needs to be viewed from two sides: relevance for the performers and for the company. Relevance (significance) for the artist is closely related to his motivation. For example, an employee who likes to learn new technologies can and should be entrusted with a research project, and not routine work. When a team understands that the goal is important, the efforts that it will direct to achieve it more effort than the unimportant goal. The tasks and goals should also be relevant to the mission (and vision) and goals of the company, that is, they should be consistent with them. I also note that the letter R (and the other letters of this abbreviation) is decoded in different ways .
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Time-bound - targets with a deadline

When discussing deadlines for accomplishing tasks or achieving goals, one cannot but remember another empirical law, the Parkinson's law : "Any work increases in volume in order to fill all the time allotted to it." From personal experience I will say that when a task has no deadline, it displaces urgent tasks and the chance that it will ever reach its hands falls. Therefore, when setting any task, it is necessary to set a deadline. Regarding the timing in web development (and in software development in general), battles fry: they must be set by the manager (as often happens) or the performer. The following approach works quite well:

• There are tasks for a period, which are dictated by external conditions: the market situation, agreements with contractors, etc. On them terms are appointed "from above".
• Most of the tasks are sent to the performers for evaluation, which is then coordinated with the manager: if necessary, the deadlines can be slightly tightened, or vice versa, time can be allocated, for example, for research works.

The urgency of the goals is quite closely related to reachability, the shorter the task is, the more difficult it is to achieve, which must be taken into account when setting tasks.

Wrong	Right
Make a website	Make a website by 10.26.09
Make the section "Contacts" on the site for demonstration to the client until tomorrow	Make the section "Contacts" on the site for demonstration to the client by 10.21.09 by 12.00

Exercises

I would like to suggest the following tasks (and questions) as exercises (answers are accepted and discussed in the comments):

1. Simple (can be done orally):
   1. Make the goals in the section "Mesuarable - measurable goals", "Achievable - achievable goals", "Time-bound - goals with deadline" and "Time-bound - goals with deadline" more specific. What criteria did you choose? Why? How are the numbers determined?
2. Medium:
   1. Redefine the goals from the "Achievable - Achievable Goals" section for two of your employees: the stars and the newcomer. What are the differences?
   2. Redefine the goals of your current project according to SMART criteria. What has changed in them? What did you miss with their original wording?
   3. Check if your organization’s goals meet SMART criteria. How can they be improved?
3. Difficult (home assignments):
   1. Formulate for yourself personal goals for this month, year, three years and five years in several ways (for example, "Work", "Education", "Finance", and so on).
   2. Similar to the previous paragraph, formulate goals for your company (department, division, division) in the form of a balanced scorecard .