Smart Business Objectives

When leaving a business analysis conference from Las Vegas, I jumped into a cab to the airport. The driver asked me which way I’d like to take to the airport.

I was feeling very analytical, and maybe a little sassy, just spending a few days alongside hundreds of business analysts. Besides, I did not know what options I had. So I said I wanted to go “the most efficient way.”

There was a pause. Then the cab driver responded:

“The street is the cheapest. The highway is the fastest.”

My answer of “efficiency” was not enough to let the cab driver know which way to take to the airport. In this context, “efficiency” could mean either the cheapest or the fastest.

Similarly, when you start understanding the objectives for improving a business process, your objectives need to be both SPECIFIC and, ideally, MEASURABLE.

Getting to More Specific Business Objectives

In our example of efficiency, the following objectives would be much more specific:

• Turnaround time,
• Cost,
• Total effort,
• Reduce errors,
• Revenue generated,
• Number of sales/customers,
• Customer satisfaction, or
• Reach/market awareness.

Not Just Specific, But Also Measurable

To take this a step further, and make them measurable, you'll need quantifiable numbers. For example:

• How many days do we have to turn-around this process?
• What is the total cost of the process now and what type of savings are we expecting?
• What is our current percentage of errors and what's our new goal?

In most organizations, measurable objectives are a challenge. Many organizations still do not have solid baseline data to draw from across all areas of the business, nor is there a focus on metrics-based performance tracking.

When this is the case, and we ask our stakeholders for measurable objectives, they simply do not know where to start.

In the absence of quantifiable measures, non-specific yet theoretically measurable business objectives can be used.

For example, instead of capturing an objective to “reduce time spent securing new customers by 10 hours” you could capture the following objective, “reduce time spent securing new customers.”

While theoretically, we could measure the results against this objective, we don’t have a specific target to hit as part of this project. Still, this objective provides valuable context to the project team.

The important practice is that you get your stakeholders thinking clearly not just about what they want in terms of a solution, but what outcome they are expecting. Because there can be many ways to solve a business problem or meet a business objective, but we won't see those opportunities until we understand exactly what we're trying to achieve and why it's so important.

Over to you - what guidelines do you use to identify business objectives? How do you help your stakeholders get clear about why they want what they want?

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Business Objectives are Just One Step to Success as a Business Analyst on a Software Project

Discovering business objectives is step 2 of the 8-step business analysis process framework we teach at Bridging the Gap.

Get an overview of the end-to-end business analysis process in this video - and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more tips and tutorials!