Managing Your Project: Setting Objectives

In the previous blog post we looked at the importance of setting a Title and some major Aims. Today we look at Objectives and why they are a vital part of project planning.

What are Objectives?

Last time I said this:

It's important to understand the difference between Aims and Objectives, as many people seem to use those terms interchangeably. Aims are what you are aiming for. They are a description of the end-point of the project. Objectives are the detailed steps you plan to take to get there.

So, the Title and the Aims help you to focus on the purpose of your project, whereas Objectives are more of an Action Plan.

Top-level Objectives

At the start of the project, you should try to map out the major steps that you will have to carry out in order for you to achieve the project aims. As an analogy, imagine you were trying to cross a river. Your Aim is to reach the other side. Your Objectives are the series of stepping stones that you have to navigate step by step. (To push the analogy a bit further, you might first want to do some research by looking around to see if there are any other river-crossing methods that might get you there safer and drier, such as a short walk to a bridge, or hiring a boat.)

What should my first Objectives look like?

Please don't stress about getting these 'perfect'. It is much more important that you just get something down on paper, and that as soon as you can you share these with other people (such as your supervisor or peer group).

Why not start off by simply making an ordered bullet-point list of all the things that come to mind when you look at your Aims and think "What needs to be done to make this happen?".

In the previous blog post we had an example project:

... with the title 'A musical instrument for people with restricted movement', Aims: To understand the needs of specific individuals who struggle to play musical instruments, and to design and build an electronic-based instrument that allows the user to play notes and chords reliably in real time.

Your first set of objectives in this case might look something like this:

Identify local contacts for working with specific people with movement difficulty who would benefit from a customised instrument
Research other electronic musical instruments for similar purposes
Learn musical programming language <be as specific as you can here>
Devise circuit diagram and components for building interface
Build instrument
Test in lab
Work with contact to get user feedback.

That's just a quick starting point, but you'll see that it's already become an ordered list of activities for you to do, rather than some general aims. These will need to be broken down into detailed tasks, and put into your planner, etc. but for now you have started the process, and have got something to work with.

Try it with your own project, and get some feedback from others as soon as you can.

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Full details of these topics (including how to brainstorm and develop your Objectives) are found in the book - Chapter 17, available on the Amazon site below.