Our desired end state includes a prioritization of goals, which is the final column in Figure 11.1. To these ends, we will advance three categories: critical goals, important goals, and desirable goals. Critical goals contain the three to seven absolute necessities for product success; they are sometimes called “live or die goals.” Important goals contain major goals that contribute to, but are not absolutely necessary for, success. Desirable goals contain objectives that it would be desirable, but not important, to meet.

This framework suggests how the project manager should allocate the limited project resources, spending resources on critical goals, conducting trades to determine resource allocation among important goals, and applying any leftover resources to desirable goals.

In practice, many organizations confuse the importance of goals with the rigidity of a need, as stated by a customer. Needs can be absolutely constraining (“the car must meet regulatory requirements”), constraining (“the car must accommodate a driver of dimensions XYZ”), or unconstrained (“the car must have good fuel efficiency”). The architect has to decide which constraining needs to satisfy and which to ignore (with the consequence of potentially shrinking the target market).

Determining how important each need is to each stakeholder was the easy part. But how should goals across stakeholders be compared? As we described in the stakeholder analysis, the fundamental principle is that stakeholders should be prioritized according to the importance of the inputs they provide to the firm.

Based on the prioritization among stakeholders, we’ve provided a possible categorization of system goals. Note that the rigidity of goals (absolutely constraining or constraining) is indicated where applicable in brackets after the goal. An analysis of the rigidity would show that it is not necessarily correlated with the importance assigned to the goals.

Descriptive goals: