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A target is a level a reading is committed to reach within a window: a quantified, time-boxed commitment on one KPI, made in service of one goal and pursued by the initiative that is judged against it. It is neither the goal, which is the outcome wanted, nor the KPI, which is how the outcome is read; it is the promise that joins them. Its direction and unit are not restated here: they are the KPI's direction and the Metric's unit.

What you can do with a target

• tableMeasurement Plan · Measurement Model

Its targets— 1

• Reactivation rate targetexemplarThe level the Retention campaign commits its Reactivation Rate to reach by the end of the Campaign flight: a stated share of lapsed customers returned, read against the KPI's direction and in its Metric's unit. A record carries the level and its baseline; the exemplar shows the shape.

Why it matters

What goes wrong without it, as the commitments that license this kind say it, each standing on its sources.

• An exemplar shows the shape a record takesA model with no instances cannot be evaluated, and a model with invented instances cannot be trusted. Treating an example as documentation of a concept rather than an assertion about the world resolves the bind: one marked exemplar shows what a record of the kind looks like, while the claim that any such record exists stays unmade.
  SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference · Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing
• A target is a level on a reading, due within a windowGoal-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.
  Building a Practically Useful Theory of Goal Setting and Task Motivation: A 35-Year Odyssey · There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives · Aligning Organizations Through Measurement: The GQM+Strategies Approach