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Setting Goals for your web project

I think that it is immensely important to set goals for your web project.

If your web project is your entire business meaning that your business is built around your website, it is even more important for you than it is for our average brick and mortar business client who uses their site to augment what they are doing in brick and mortar.

• How many people really know how to set good goals?
• What are good goals?
• How do I measure the against the goals I set?

There are all types of goals.
Some may say that you should set goals that are detailed, goals that have a time frame and measurables attached to them such as;

• I will loose 10 pounds in 2 months.

With goals like these.

• You can certainly measure them.
• You can certainly develop a plan to work toward this type of goal and work that plan to achieve the goal.

So, then what?

In my opinion, there is the problem with these types of goals.  Then what? 
You achieved the goal... so now what?  Set another goal?
I am not saying that these don't have their place or do not have value.

I think there is a better way.

What about a different type of goal that you can check yourself against daily... not check just check your progress, but check your whole self, all of your actions.
What about a goal that looks more like this;

• I will be healthy and be accountable for what I eat and how much I exercise.

Now, this goal may result in loosing those 10 pounds, but it may also help you keep them off if you are checking yourself and all your actions against this goal each day.  Like an addict, you have to take one day at a time.  Sure look toward the future, but you are only given one day at a time.  Every day you have to be accountable to your goals, not just at the end of a predefined meaningless period like 2 months.

Now that you understand the concept.  Let's translate this into your web goals.
Most software engineers and IT people I have encountered; if they encourage you to set goals at all they might look something like this;

• Enhance ad management system to provide geo targeting of ads in 60 days.
• Provide acceptance of 3rd party ad serving tags within ad management system in 12 business days.

While there is nothing wrong with these highly logical requirements based goals, you are still faced with the same question as before... what then?
Oh sure, technology is constantly evolving and there will always be new requirements to build software around.
I am just saying:

There are better ways to set business goals for your web projects and therefore better ways to build software.

There are better goals.
Perhaps something more like;

• Provide advertisers with a positive experience that deliver them results and be accountable for views (impressions) and results.

Now, your goal is not tied to some short term feature request or system requirement.  It is something that you can measure yourself against everyday regardless of the technology (which is always changing).

Remember, goals are different than a plan, you must first have goals to develop a plan to achieve those goals.

The best goals are goals that you can measure your performance against on a regular even daily basis.

A web firm that is truely a good one can help you develop goals like this for your business as well as a plan to execute on these goals with the ever changing technology.
At QD, we are much more than a software company, we are solutions company that just happens to develop software to help our clients execute their business goals... everyday.
There are a lot of "monkeys" out there that will sling some code at a client to take care of just in time solution, or often, just a little too late solution.
While we can sling code with the best of them.
QD is much more than a few "code monkeys".
But, you have to give us the chance to be more, you have to trust us to help you step through the business planning and discovery phase of your project that is so often overlooked.

Unlike a typical corporate IT department that is just interested in "meeting your requirements". We want to see you and your business be successful, we want to see you thrive!

I look forward to hearing from you soon to further demonstrate our value outside of being just a code monkey for you.

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