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Defining the app project goals

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Having a project plan ensures that you have the right resources (time, people, and funds) and follow a consistent approach to ensure a good level of quality for the apps you make.

Having a clear objective for what you and your project team are trying to achieve is important so that your project team members share the same goals. Writing down your goals is a good way to clarify what you want the app you're considering making to achieve. It also ensures you don't lose focus on what you need to create and what features to prioritize. (More information: Prioritizing features and requests)

If you have very ambitious goals, you might want to start thinking about how to break down the project into incremental releases. (In a later section, we'll discuss the incremental release methodology.)

In the previous section, you created business goals for your project. You might want to create additional goals related to the adoption, functionality, and usability of the app and its non-financial impact on the business (such as increasing job satisfaction).

Example: Expense report solution goals

When we looked at the overall business goals for our solution, we decided to divide them into releases so that we could deliver value incrementally:

Release 1:

  • For at least 80 percent of expense reports, expense report creators spend no more than 20 minutes actively working on creating reports.

  • Within one month of solution availability, 100 percent of expense reports use the digital system.

Release 2:

  • For at least 90 percent of expense reports, the time between submitting the report and having a payment logged in the finance system is less than three business days.

  • By the end of the year, department managers can access a weekly budget report that's up to date for all expenses within one hour of their approval.

  • The number of errors found in the semiannual audit is reduced by 50 percent.

Additional goals for release 1 of the solution:

  • 80 percent of salespeople surveyed report being able to meet all their expense reporting needs by using the mobile app.

  • 80 percent of users can do their top-priority tasks in the app without any instruction.

Next step: Defining the project scope