According to the Business Motivation Model (BMM) of the Business Rules Group and Object Management Group (OMG), an Objective is a statement of an attainable, time-targeted, and measurable target that the organization wants to meet in order to achieve its Goals. An Objective must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
▪Objectives quantify Goals: Objectives provide the basis for measures to determine whether a Goal is being achieved. Objectives differ from Goals in that Objectives should always be time-targeted and measurable. Compared to a Goal, an Objective tends to be short term, quantitative (rather than qualitative), specific (rather than general), and not continuing beyond its timeframe (which might be cyclical).
▪Objectives are achieved by Tactics.
Objectives should be:
1 Attainable. If Objectives are not attainable, the business plans are unrealistic and will fail.
2 Time-targeted. All Objectives should be targeted to either a specific time frame (for example, “Will be met by September 1, 2018”) or a relative time frame (for example, “Will be met within two years”).
3 Measurable. An Objective should have a specific criteria for determining whether it is being met. This criteria can be exact (for example, “on-time 95% of the time”), or at least provide a basis for making a “yes or no” determination (for example, “up and running”). These criteria might be the basis for certain Business Rules that are created to figure out if a Business Objective is being met.
Example objectives
▪Number of Complaints received in 2Q 2006 Should Be 20 percent less than 2Q 2004.
▪By September 1, 2006, number of complaints received should be 20 percent less than levels of 2nd Quarter, 2004.
▪Increase Number of Reservations to 1000 a day by July 1, 2006.
Properties of a Business Objective
Target Date
The date when the Business Objective is to be accomplished.
Achievement %
An indication of the progress toward accomplishment of the Business Targets associated with the Business Objective. You can enter a numeric value representing the percentage.
Owner
In the Owner property, you specify the Organizational Unit that has specified the objective. It is important to understand who has specified the objective. If you do not know the responsible party for an objective, it might be hard in the future to track down the reason for it, which might lead to perpetuation of unnecessary objectives. Objectives might have been created because of requirements that have long since become defunct, or to temporarily build workrounds in systems that did not fully support business needs. Knowing the owner enables you to challenge the objective to see if it is still necessary. These objectives should be very specific and should state specific measurements of success, for example: “Increase on-time arrivals by 10 percent by 2002” and “Achieve $100 million in sales by 2003”.
Targets, by Performance Measure
A reference property that links the Business Objective to its targets. A Business Target definition is keyed to Business Objective and Performance Measure. The Target Value property of Business Target is the value to be achieved. The corresponding units of measure are found in the related Performance Measure.
Initiatives
This property links the Business Objective with those initiatives that are intended to bring about its realization. This comes directly from Kaplan & Norton. An Initiative, in turn, can be organized as a number of Programs. A Program can link to an IDEF0, Functional Hierarchy, or Process Hierarchy diagram.
Note that if you follow the Enterprise Direction approach to showing how you are going to execute a strategy, then you decompose a Strategy into a function or process diagram. The balanced scorecard approach ties an initiative directly to an objective. These are two valid, yet distinct, approaches for modeling goals and strategies. Balanced scorecard is interested in identifying initiatives and programs that support a given objective. The Business Rules Group (Enterprise Direction diagram) is more into the “how” as a combination of strategy and tactics.
Tactics
You can specify what Tactics are used to achieve a Business Objective via the Tactic Vs Business Objective matrix, in the Enterprise Direction Matrices tab of the Matrix browser (select View > Matrix Browser to open).
Business Rules
A Business Rule supports the achievement of a Business Objective. You can specify which Business Rules support the achievement of which Business Objectives via the Business Rule Vs Business Objective matrix, in the Enterprise Direction Matrices tab of the Matrix browser (select View > Matrix Browser to open).
Performance Measures
Targets by Performance Measure is a reference property that links the Business Objective to its targets. A Business Target definition is keyed to Business Objective and Performance Measure. The Target Value property of Business Target is the value to be achieved. The corresponding units of measure are found in the related Performance Measure.
Expectations
The Expectations of Stakeholders can align with certain Business Objectives. The links are made using the Business Objective is aligned with Stakeholder Expectation matrix. The Stakeholder Expectation definition appear on the Stakeholder Relationship line on the Stakeholder Relationships diagram.
Influences
You can specify external or internal influences, which can bode positively or negatively, on a Business Objective. This enables you to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) involved in a project or business venture. This reflects the approach of the Business Motivation Model, which says that SWOT analysis is the result of considering the impact of each influence on each objective.