Project Weeknotes Part 3: Goals and Success
Now we get to one of my favourite things to do, writing Goals. We must create a clear path to success to communicate with others and hold all stakeholders accountable. Writing better Goals will help to connect the work done and the people who will be impacted.
Goals
I haven’t written and spoken about Goals a lot …like seriously, probably too much. So I will not dig into how to write good Goals in this post but how I write in context to a piece of product to be built.
Firstly, begin with writing from a 1st person's view and who exactly that is. This helps to add context to the work and deliverables, which as a freelancer, is a key communication piece. Therefore, I write it as:
We need to …
As a company developing an app, we need to …
As the engineering department, we want to …
Next, we add what we/I want to do or get, which gives us a point to assess how achievable the Goal is. Too ambitious, and there is friction in creating momentum. But if it is not ambitious enough, there is no weight, making it feel superficial. What is also important is being specific by using numbers and time here. People need to know clearly what you mean. Here are some examples:
… we need to have a 10% conversion rate next month …
… we want to get to weekly sprints …
... we need to see 5% growth year on year …
Finally, finish it off with what you want to accomplish from doing the thing. Another way to phrase this is what you will have after the work that you didn’t have before. Much like:
… so that we can expand into a new market.
… so we prove our concept and validate the problem.
… so we gain an unfair advantage in the market.
Put this all together, and you can template as:
As [persona], we need/want to [some action or acquisition] so that [some material value gained].
As with the previous posts in this series, this is just a starting point and hitting the right notes may well look a little different.
For Project Weeknotes:
As someone who wants to develop personally, I need a way to reflect and plan once a week to improve continuously.
As someone who wants to develop personally, I want to reflect on the previous 5 weeks to see how far I have come so I can feel motivated in overwhelming times.
As someone who reflects on the week just passed, I want to share that with others, so I have some form of accountability regarding my progress.
Success
For every work request, I ask clients, “what does success look like?”. Now whilst Goals are specific and measured, Success is a means to see it as a more abstract and intangible quantification. A good prompt is to complete the sentence “I will be happy when …”. This is more about feelings and our human connection to the work than just a number.
For Project Weeknotes:
I feel accountable for the things I set out to do.
I have criticism and feedback from the tasks at hand.
I feel productive and see the progression in myself.
End of Part 3
Everything I have added in Parts 1-3 I see as the context that anyone coming with no knowledge whatsoever can jump in and know where we are today. Next will be the Hypothesis and Validations!
