Objectives and Performance
Specifications: The Criteria
for Accomplishment1
Knowing where you are headed and how to accurately measure when you have arrived is central to successful planning, doing, delivering, and accomplishment; this is enabled by using measurable objectives. Measurable objectives are statements of where you are headed and how to measure when you have arrived; they have the performance specifications for reliably assessing completion. They also provide the criteria for planning by stating measurable results to be accomplished.
Mega Planning will additionally ensure that the “where you are headed” is the right destination. Now let’s just identify how to define results—any level of result. Figure 5.1 provides some guidance.
It is vital that everything that is used, done, and delivered has data-base specifications: prepare objectives that are really useful and clearly state where you are headed and how to tell when you have arrived.
Figure 5.1. Useful aid for formatting useful measurable objectives.
Four different scales of measurement for you to use. Because objectives should be rigorous, we can consider and use four different types of measurement. Table 5.1 identifies the four scales of measurement and the purpose of each.
| Name of scale of Measurements | Name of purpose They are used For |
| Nominal | Goal (or Aim, or Purpose) |
| Ordinal | Goal (or Aim, or Purpose) |
| Interval | Objective |
| Ratio | Objective |
Table 5.1. The four scales of measurement and their related purposes.2
The more objectives are written in Interval or Ratio scale terms, the more likely the planning, design, development, and implementation will be successful. Fuzzy objectives will not serve us well to guide us in getting from where we are to success.
Means and Ends