Setting SMART goals for developers

The journey of a developer is constituted of hard work and self-improvement. Maybe you are going to work on a big freelance project, to solve programming challenges or expand your knowledge in an area where you lack expertise; whatever you want to be productive for, setting SMART goals can help you stay focused and reach big achievements.

According to Wiktionary, the definition of goal is a result that one is attempting to achieve: setting a goal is the first step in deciding what you want to do. But to find out how you're gonna achieve a goal and concentrate on it, you must refine and work also on its definition.

Verba volant, scripta manent
The most important part of a goal is where it's kept: while verbal and mental goals are volatile and can change over time, a written goal is carved in stone until you consciously decide to modify it. The characteristic of a SMART goal are best exploited when they are consistently written and reviewed. You're gonna write a Unix clone? Write it. You're gonna launch a new search engine? Force yourself to write it down.
To help your productivity, you should definitely do what works for you; however, keep in mind that this system has helped a lot of people to get out of lazyness and to maintain a good attitude while working on their passions.

The five SMART keywords
SMART is an acronym for five terms a goal must implement to be really useful. The SMART criteria is used in many management fields, for instance to question a project's objectives. Writing user stories instead of a list of features is an implementation of SMART goals.
These keywords are:

• Specific: you must be specific in your goal as vague ones cannot give you the needed focus. Learning Java is not a specific goal, while Write a small application in Java is a little better. The logic of being specific is that writing a specific, narrow goal will make you think of a plan and to respect the other SMART characteristics; if a goal is too big you should break it into smaller sub-goals that are enough specific, doing a sort of idea refactoring.
• Measurable: the achievement should be scientificly and quantitatively measurable. While it seems obvious, this goal characteristic is really important: otherwise you'll never know if the goal has been achieved and should be deleted form you list. Again as an example, Learning Java is not measurable, while Writing a clone of the ls command in Java is very measurable.
• Attainable: while a goal can be out of your comfort zone, you must consider the time and the work you will put in this experience. Earn $100,000 in one week is often not an attainable goal for the majority of us.
• Relevant: a goal has to be challenging. Otherwise why set it? If a goal is too simple or short, it is more a task on yur todo list instead of a life-changing experience. In our example, if you're already experienced with Java you should strive for writing a more complex application instead of the simple ls, while this can be a good programming problem for a person that has never tried an object-oriented language.
  
• Time-bound: you must set a deadline for measure your achievements. As Keith Ferrazzi says, a goal is a dream with a deadline: if you do not set a specific date when you want to have accomplished this goal, it will remain a dream. A deadline is what forces you to work and stimulate your productivity, even if it's self-imposed.

In sum, our goal has gone from Learning Java to Write wget in Java before Sep 30, 2009, written for instance in a GOALS.txt file in my home directory, which I really have. I hope seeing this version of the goal helps you to think of what you need to do in order to accomplish it: learn the basic Java syntax and approach to programming, find out what libraries for networking and filesystem management are avaiable and how to set up a working development environment. Note that these are all googleable tasks, while Learning Java will point you to base level courses when you learn to create Dog and Cat classes which extend Animal.
TDD is another example of goal setting: writing a test is in fact setting a goal which is very Measurable, since the red/green bar will tell you if the test has passed and a computer is deterministic (if you do not write brittle tests). There are other problems to solve, though: productivity is halted if you do not implement enough user stories per day; or you might fall into testing only getters and setters, which is not a Relevant goal.

Feel free to raise questions: productivity is a difficult and subjective field, in which everyone of us can learn from each other.

Coaches talk about schemes, game plans and tactic, but the purpose of football is only to score a goal more than the opponent team. Set your goals to know what you're heading towards.