A target is a level on a reading, due within a window

Answers Derivation · Deontics

A Target is a quantified, time-boxed commitment: it sets a level for exactly one KPI, quantifies exactly one Goal that KPI serves, and is due within exactly one Time Window. Its direction is the KPI's and its unit is the Metric's, so neither is restated. A Campaign pursues zero or more Targets, and is measured by each target's KPI and supports each target's goal. A Target is not a Goal, which is the outcome wanted, and not a KPI, which is how the outcome is read; it is the promise that joins them, and what a result is judged against.

What goes wrong without it

Goal-setting research finds that specific, difficult goals produce higher performance than vague or absent ones, and that the effect depends on the goal being measurable and time-bound; the management literature made the same point as a mnemonic in 1981, and the frameworks that join strategy to metrics give each goal a magnitude and a timeframe. This model held goals as evergreen outcome areas and KPIs as readings, and left the level a campaign was actually committed to nowhere: a campaign could be measured by a KPI without ever saying what result would count as success. A Target makes that commitment a term of its own, joins it to the goal and the reading it belongs to, and lets the build refuse a campaign that promises a reading it does not take.

What proves it — 1

Each is a gate the build runs: a check inside a ring, a whole ring, or an eval beside them. A build stops at the first that refuses.

• registry integritytarget coherence
  A target sets a level for one KPI, quantifies one goal that KPI serves, and is due within one window; a campaign that pursues a target is measured by that target's KPI and supports that target's goal, so a target never promises a reading the campaign does not take or an outcome it does not claim.

Derived from — 3

• Locke and Latham, American Psychologist 57(9), 2002Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey
• Doran, Management Review 70(11), American Management Association, 1981There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives
• Basili, Trendowicz, Kowalczyk, Heidrich, Seaman, Münch and Rombach, Springer, 2014Aligning Organizations Through Measurement: The GQM+Strategies Approach

Kinds it licenses

Relationships it licenses

sets level for · quantifies goal · due within · pursues target · serves goal · measured by · supports goal

Where this model stands

Targets holds one exemplar, the Reactivation rate target: the level the Retention campaign commits its Reactivation Rate to within the Campaign flight, quantifying Retention & Reactivation.

A target's level, baseline and time basis are facts about a record, and the exemplar states their shape in its definition; the first record admitted licenses the fields that carry them.

Objective and Key Result are not kinds of their own: an objective is a Goal, and a key result is a Target.

What it does not claim

A record's level, baseline and confidence floor are fields a measurement contract licenses when the first record is admitted; until then the graph carries the commitment's shape and its joins, not its number.

A target on a Metric no KPI reads is not admitted: a level is set on a reading someone is accountable for.

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