Welcome back. In this video, I'll define project goals and deliverables and explain why they're important. Then I'll teach you how to determine whether a goal or deliverable has been well-defined, which means it's got enough detail and information to guide you towards success. First things first, to set up a project for success, and to make your job easier, you want to figure out what needs to be done before you actually get started. You need to define exactly what your goals and deliverables are, so that you'll be able to tell your team members what to do. You need a clear picture of what you're trying to accomplish, how you're going to accomplish it, and how you know when it has been accomplished. Let's define project goals so that you can start to figure out what your project team needs to reach it. The project goal is the desired outcome of the project. It's what you've been asked to do and what you're trying to achieve. For example, your goal could be to improve the response time to customer inquiries via email by 20 percent. The goal of your Office Green project might be to increase revenue by five percent through a new service called Plant Pals that offers desk plants to top customers by the end of the year. Goals are important because they give you a roadmap to your destination. Without a clear goal in mind, how can you know where to go or how to get there? Now, one of the biggest differences between what makes a good goal and a not-so-good goal is how well it's defined. Meaning: how clear and specific is the goal. If the goal is your destination, are you confident you'll know when you've arrived? The examples I mentioned before, to improve the response time to customer inquiries via email by 20 percent, and to increase the Office Green revenue by five percent are two well-defined goals because they tell you what you're trying to achieve. But wait, there's more. These goals also tell you how to do what you've been asked to do. In this case, it's via email and through a new service offering, and that's not all. These goals clarify the goal even further by saying "to improve by 20 percent and increase by five percent." Now we know where we're going. Well-defined goals are both specific and measurable. They give you a clear sense of what you are trying to accomplish. Really great goals have even more detail, but I'll get to that soon. When you start a project, take time to review your goals and make sure they're well-defined. To do this, you might need to get more information from your stakeholders. Talk to them about their vision for the project. Ask how this aligns to the company's larger goals and mission. By the end of that conversation, you and your stakeholders should agree to support the project goals in order to avoid running into issues later on. Here's an example from my own experience as a project manager. Our team had finished a new product feature. Our stated goal was to deliver an early version of this feature and collect user feedback. When we delivered the feature to one of our key customers for user feedback, the customer didn't have anyone available to try it out. Our team debated whether or not we had met the goal if we hadn't collected user feedback. Some felt that we hadn't achieved the stated goal while others thought we did. The customer was satisfied with our team's ability to deliver a feature in the timeline stated. But our internal team, wasted valuable time going back and forth about it. That said, make sure that before you start your project, you, your stakeholders, and your team are all clear on the project goals so that you know you're making the right kind of progress. I'll teach you a process for how to do this coming up. Once you have the goals nailed down, it's time to examine the project deliverables. Project deliverables are the products or services that are created for the customer, client, or project sponsor. In other words, a deliverable is what gets produced or presented at the end of a task, event, or process. Take the goal to improve customer response time. the deliverable for that goal could be the creation of email templates for responding to typical questions. Your Office Green project goal to increase revenues could have these two deliverables: launching the plant service and a finished website that highlights the new kinds of plants being offered. These are considered deliverables because they describe tangible outputs that show stakeholders how additional revenues will be generated. There are all sorts of project deliverable examples. A pretty common one is a report. When a goal is reached, you can visibly see the results documented in the chart, graph, or presentation. Deliverables help us quantify and realize the impact of the project. Just like needing well-defined goals, you need well-defined deliverables for pretty much the same reasons. Deliverables are usually decided upfront with the stakeholders or clients involved in the project. They hold everyone accountable and are typically a big part of achieving the goal. Make sure to ask questions about what the deliverable should be and have everyone share their vision and expectations of the deliverables so that you're all on the same page. Coming up, you'll practice the art of defining your goals even further following the SMART method. Enjoy.