Daniel Pinho

§ 12 Goal-Oriented Achievements

Context

Developers often work with other people in their tasks. These people may be, for example, other developers, stakeholders, or managers, but they are all part of the same endeavour.

Problem

Direction is needed for developers to work well, as it provides them with a general sense of where to go with their work. However, while a general direction is important, it is not enough to set goals.

How should we define goals?

Forces

  • Business stakeholders are often the ones who set priorities and objectives, accounting for their increased context on the organisation’s context. However, the developers are the ones that have to take those priorities and objectives into account and get things done.
  • Broader, higher-level goals are more accessible to define, and achieving them can showcase a significant leap in progress. However, narrower, lower-level goals are more actionable, but are smaller in size and thus they may not showcase as much progress.
  • Goals can be well-designed and useful in guiding work, but if teams cannot perceive how much progress they are making, their motivation and alignment can suffer.

Solution

Adopt strategies for effective goal-setting, such as bringing developers and stakeholders together in the goal-making process, employing a mix of large-scope and smaller-scope goals, defining smart goals, and employing mechanisms to track their progress.

All of these strategies bring effectiveness into goals through various approaches. Starting with the people involved, the goal-setting process should be one where the developers who will be working directly towards the goal have a say. Even if they do not end up having the authority in making these decisions themselves, they can help in informing a decision since they will bring their own expertise and domain knowledge. Other stakeholders, such as managers, clients and users, for example, should also be a source of information and, as such, involved in the process.

Including more people in the goal-setting process can be done by changing the scope. An organisation’s top-level leadership can set high-level, broader goals while smaller, more focused goals can be set at the team level. This can enable the entire organisation to move together in one direction, while each individual team contributes in their own way.

At a smaller level, goals should be well thought out. Doran[1] proposes that effective goals are smart: specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-related. Specific goals provide clear-cut definitions, ensuring people understand what needs to be done. Measurable goals enable people to understand how much progress has been achieved and if completion is still far off. Assignable goals provide accountability by defining who is in charge of them. Realistic goals ground the team based on their skills and resources — while ambition is a desirable characteristic, having Sisyphean goals can be demoralising. Finally, time-related goals give people direction as to when things need to get done.

The goals should, finally, be tracked. This enables teams to be aware of the status of the goals and if done well, avoids them getting sidetracked. In addition, seeing the progress they have made can have a beneficial effect. Teams often use collaboration tools such as Jira, Trello or even GitHub issues and boards to keep up with the status of tasks and goals. The process and practices employed by the team (see Relevant Activities) ought to provide mechanisms to facilitate goal tracking.

Examples

  • The Sprint Goal in Scrum[2][3] is a common example of goal-setting at the team level. During the Sprint Planning ceremony, the Scrum Team defines what they will strive to do during the Sprint, supporting the Sprint Goal with the Product Backlog Items they chose. At the end of the Sprint, the Product Increment should meet the Sprint Goal.
  • Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) assists teams in retaining focus, fosters transparency between teams, and ensures priorities are set regularly. Objectives are qualitative, stating what should be accomplished, and are time-bound. Meanwhile, key results are quantitative statements, serving as a litmus test to ensure objectives are being fulfilled consistently[4].
  • Roadmaps divide development work into major milestones, which represent meaningful progress points, such as major version releases or new features. Milestones provide teams with a concrete way of visualising the headway they make, while stakeholders can use them to evaluate the organisation’s progress and adjust the priorities in place[5].

Consequences

  • Effective goal-setting ensures developers have well-defined priorities, and can visualize how they can approach their tasks.
  • Defining effective goals requires care and effort to ensure the goals have the right information and that effort is not wasted.
  • While having developers and stakeholders involved in the goal-setting process is useful in that decisions are better informed, they can also reach a “too many cooks in the kitchen” situation and, in the end, the developers’ DX ends up suffering.

Similarly to §11 Intrinsic Motivation, this pattern contributes to a developer’s value of their contribution (per §4 Well-Valued Contribution).

References

  1. G. T. Doran, “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. Way to write management’s goals and objectives,” Management review, vol. 70, no. 11, pp. 35–36, 1981.
  2. K. Schwaber and J. Sutherland, “The Scrum Guide: The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game.” Nov. 2020. Available: https://scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2020/2020-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf
  3. J. Sutherland, J. O. Coplien, L. Heasman, M. den Hollander, and C. O. Ramos, A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game. in The Pragmatic Programmers. Raleigh, North Carolina: The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2019. Available: https://scrumbook.org
  4. V. Stray, J. H. Gundelsby, R. Ulfsnes, and N. Brede Moe, “How agile teams make Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) work,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Software and System Processes and International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Pittsburgh PA USA: ACM, May 2022, pp. 104–109. doi: 10.1145/3529320.3529332.
  5. S. Trieflinger, J. Münch, E. Bogazköy, P. Eißler, J. Schneider, and B. Roling, “Product Roadmap Alignment – Achieving the Vision Together: A Grey Literature Review,” in Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops, vol. 396, M. Paasivaara and P. Kruchten, Eds., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020, pp. 50–57. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-58858-8_6.

Last updated: December 18, 2025