In a recent post I high lighted 18 ways to successfully get started with your project.

Once you get going it is important that you know where you are going, so here are 13 tips for setting project goals.

1. The sooner you have gained approval for the goals for the project, the greater the likelihood is for the project to reach its goals.
2. Remember that goals are future desired results and not tasks to be performed.
3. The project goals are the foundation for how tasks are perceived, planned and evaluated within the boundary of the project.
4. The best goals are created when the entire team is involved in creating them, at the same time it increases the understanding for the project within the team.
5. Keep in mind that formulating relevant and clear goals takes time.
6. Express the expectations on the project in clear impact goals and make sure to get a agreement from the customer.
7. Formulate the project goals as one main goal and several sub-goals.
8. Make sure to define create clear project boundaries to identify what is not expected from the project.
9. To ensure that you have not missed anything essential group the requirements according to their importance, e.g you could use the MoSCoW method.
10. Discuss with the customer and document how to prioritize between resources, performance and time.
11. Define how success will be measured.
12. Keep in mind that the impact goal(s) are the most important goal(s) to achieve and as a result other goals may change during the project.
13. Only tasks that contribute to fulfilling one or more project goals should be performed within the framework of the project.