Developing a Mission, Vision, Goals, and Objectives 49
find that you have developed the right solution to the wrong problem.
The Real Mission of Every Project i said earlier that the mission is always to achieve the vision. However, i should add that the vision you are trying to achieve is the one the customer holds. Another way to say this is that you are trying to satisfy the customer’s needs. That is the primary ob-jective. your motive may be to make a profit in the process, but the mission is always to meet the needs of the customer. That means, of course, that you must know what those needs are, and sometimes this isn’t easy, because even the customer isn’t clear about them. so you have to translate or interpret as best you can. your best safeguard is to keep the customer involved in the proj-ect from concept to completion so that there is a constant check on whether what you are doing will achieve the desired result. The mission of the project can be written by answering two questions:
- what are we going to do? 2. For whom are we going to do it?
in the previous edition of this book, it was suggested that you also state how you will go about meeting those customer needs, but this should not be part of the mission statement itself. The mis-sion statement defines “what” you are doing; “how” you are going to do it is project strategy and should be dealt with separately.
Developing Project Objectives once a mission statement has been developed, you can write your project objectives. Note that objectives are much more spe-cific than the mission statement itself and define results that must be achieved in order for the overall mission to be accomplished. Also, an objective defines the desired end result.
American Management Association • www.amanet.org
