How do you set project goals? How do you monitor the progress of goals?

Projects are the building blocks of any organization. For any organization to grow, and for the betterment of society through these projects, it is necessary, the projects are well designed, set, thought of, and completed on time with good user usability.

Projects are initiated when a problem is found at one end, and is initiated when organizations come up with a plan to tackle the problem. The goals of any project can be huge and need to be well evaluated before any project starts. To understand the goal, one has to understand the problem and these problems can be understood from the stakeholders involved in the project. As a Business Analyst, he or she has to comprehend the requirements from the stakeholders. The comprehension of requirements can be done through elicitation techniques. From brainstorming, JAD, questionnaire, focus groups, interviews etc., a business analyst can understand the requirements of stakeholders and subsequently set project goals.

Further, once the requirements are understood, developers part if need be, can play a major role for any project. Feasibility study, from the developers point of view, as well as feasibility study from technical, organizational, financial perspective is must. If the feasibility study fits the criteria set by the project managers, the project commences. Along the way, if any change requests are demanded by the clients, these need to be handled smoothly and effectively considering the scope of the project as well. As projects involve a huge number of risks, a risk analysis by the project stakeholders can help foresee the risks involved in a project and can place measures to tackle these problems. Organizations can also perform SWOT analysis to understand its capabilities before a project is taken up to avoid unnecessary work and efforts.

Once a deadline for the project is set and the project starts, it necessary to keep track of the developments taking place in the project. To make sure a single requirement is not missed, it is beneficial to make use of a requirements traceability matrix (RTM). This table can hugely benefit the project managers to make sure any requirement is not missed. As a project starts, it can involve huge tasks, bases on how complex and how important a particular a task is, project managers and developers can set a business value and complexity points for the same. This methodology is implemented in AGILE and the project can work on set tasks and assignments in a set time. A Scrum master can then facilitate the development and progress of the project.

The developments of the project need to be monitored as well to understand the pace of work and its progress. Project developers and the involved stakeholders can document the work and base on predefined set of goals. Project managers need to keep track of every process involved to avoid missing deadlines and this can also be done through the use of Gantt charts, which are used to track project schedules. As projects need to be completed on time without missing any requirements, documentation helps the organizations achieve the required goals.