What is SMART?

SMART is a simple technique that helps you set goals effectively, be it product, organisational, project or for sprints. This is an effective tool to include in your Scrum techniques.

What does SMART stand for?

Specific
Measurable
Agreed
Realistic
Timebound

SPECIFIC

When setting our goals we do not want them to be a general statement, goals must be specific so that we can determine if we met them or not. Lets say we are going to run a program of work to reduce our manual processing times so that we dont have to hire more staff to cater for increased sales volumes.

“Reduce manual processing times” this is not a specific goal, it is open to any interpretation. If I reduce it by 1 second anywhere where manual processing takes place, does that mean I have achieved the goal?

For setting specific goals we can use the interogative W’s:

Who: Who is involved?
What: What do I want to accomplish?
Where:What area, location, department or group will benefit from this?
When: Establish a time frame, When will this occur?
Which:Identify requirements and constraints.
Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

Using our previous example, the goal below is specific but still not complete:

“Reduce manual processing times for each new order taken by the order clerk so that we do not have to hire new staff and increase labour costs.”

MEASURABLE

A measurable goal allows us to know when we have achieved our goal. To determine some form of metricism,  we can use interogative H’s:

How much?

How many times?

How Fast?

So we expand our goal by making it measurable by including a processing time metric:

“Reduce manual processing times for each new order taken by the order clerk from the current 6 minutes to 4 minutes so that we do not have to hire new staff and increase labour costs.”

When we can process new orders within 4 minutes then we have accomplished our specific goal.

AGREED

Agreed goals are goals where all stakeholders and team members doing the work to reach the goals are in agreement and all have a mutual understanding of what is to be accomplished.

REALISTIC

The goals must be realistic to achieve based on resources, ability, knowledge, time, skills etc.

To show an extreme example of an unrealistic goal:

“Reduce manual processing times for each new order taken by the order clerk from the current 6 minutes to 0.3 milliseconds so that we do not have to hire new staff and increase labour costs.”

TIMEBOUND

Time bound means that a sufficient amount of time must be allowed to achieve the goal. So to expand our example our goal could be:

“Reduce manual processing times for each new order taken by the order clerk from the current 6 minutes to 4 minutes within 12 months,  so that we do not have to hire new staff and increase labour costs.”