direction — goals
Goals
A Goal holds the annual direction. It is qualitative, stable, and does not change unless the team's fundamental understanding of its users changes. "Make grading invisible for teachers" is a Goal. It tells the team what kind of progress matters for the year without specifying how to make it or how to measure it.
A Goal that can be confirmed after a single sprint was never a Goal — it was a task dressed as a direction. The distinction matters: a direction cannot be completed. It can only be moved toward. That is what makes it a Goal rather than a deliverable.
In the chain, a Goal is what an initiative must connect to before it is worth naming. "We believe closing this gap will move us toward making grading invisible" is a traceable bet. "We believe closing this gap will move us toward building the grading module" is not — because a module is a solution, not a direction. The initiative connects upward to a Goal, not downward to a deliverable.
Goal vs task dressed as direction
✗ Goal: "Build the grading module."
This is a deliverable. It can be checked off and never thought about again. The team has a destination, not a direction. The moment the module ships, the Goal is gone.
✓ Goal: "Make grading invisible for teachers."
This is a direction. It is still true after the grading module ships. It asks: did shipping the module actually make grading invisible? If not, there is more work in this direction. The Goal survives the delivery of any single feature.
A direction survives its implementations. That is what makes it useful as the stable origin of the chain.
How to apply this
- ✓ Write a Goal that would still be true if every Objective this year changed. If rewriting the Objectives would make the Goal obsolete, it is an Objective in disguise.
- ✓ Is it directional — something you move toward — rather than something you can complete? Goals are never finished. Objectives are finished.
- ✗ Do not write a new Goal every quarter. Quarterly Goal changes mean the team is reacting to events, not maintaining a direction.
- ✗ Do not include a metric in the Goal. Metrics belong in Key Results. A Goal with a metric is an Objective.