Goal Mapping
Updated on Sunday, July 30, 2023
A method that helps teams identify, discuss, and prioritize a list of goals for a project, department, or organization. Includes templates and facilitation guide.
Picture this. Your team has come together to kickoff a new project. You already know what you will build, and you even have specific goals you're trying to support or achieve. But does everyone on the team understand the goals the same way? Does everyone even have the same goals?
A goal map is a straightforward, versatile method that almost anyone can run. It helps individuals and teams identify, discuss, and prioritize a set of shared goals, so you agree on why you're building what you're building. Goal maps work for sprints, releases, projects, products, teams, departments, and entire organizations.
This page explains how Goal Mapping works, the concrete outcomes the method generates, and the materials you need to try it out along with templates and framing material you can download to use as-is or customize.
| Difficulty | Anyone can do this |
|---|---|
| Participants | Up to 12 with or without experience |
| Time | 45 minutes (in-person), 45 minutes (remote) |
| Materials | Standard stuff: a way to collect ideas and a place to collect them |
When to use
A core method; great for aligning any team on any project
Because Goal Maps align teams around a shared set of prioritized goals, it is highly versatile, ideal, and recommended for any kind of kickoff for any kind of project or initiative.
Great for aligning new teams
Although useful for any project or initiative, Goal Maps are especially useful for new teams with members across departments or organizations. Goals often tie back to unspoken assumptions around what's important. A Goal Map provides an opportunity to reveal these unspoken assumptions, so the team can align around what they, as a team, think is important.
Ideal for kickoffs for new initiatives or projects
When most projects and initiatives begin, teams assume they have the same set of goals. Or maybe someone has already identified the project's goals. In either case, it's highly likely that not everyone on the team shares the same goals. A Goal Map helps new projects and initiatives start off with a well-aligned team.
Good for quick, high-level strategy
It can take weeks to work through a detailed, nuanced strategy. If you need to create momentum and get teams moving now instead of waiting for a full strategy, Goal Maps generate a quick, high-level strategy that is good enough to start choosing directions. That's useful not just for a project team, but also for a room full of execs flown in from across the country to kick off an initiative.
How it works
Goal Mapping is a Strategy method to make a decision about goals and their priority. It uses Brainstorming to list all participant goals, Affinitization to group goals by similarity, Labelling to identify goal themes, and Stack ranking or Pyramid ranking to prioritize goal themes.
- First, brainstorm or list your goals or objectives
- Second, group goals together by similarity to identify higher-level goal "themes"
- Finally, prioritize goal "themes" from most to least important
When you discuss and group goals by similarity, your team—literally—gets on the same page about what the goals are. And as you prioritize the goals, your team comes together to identify what is most important and why, rationale that will support countless team decisions as you move forward.
Alternatives to consider
Goal Map offers a straightforward way for teams to align around a shared set of prioritized goals. If you need to focus more narrowly, the Goals and Anti-goals method helps teams identifies both what their goals are, as well as what they are not.
If you would like even more specificity, Future State Vision articulates goals as concrete future events.
What you need
Inputs
- Start with a blank slate
- Start with pre-collected goals
Outputs
- List of individual goals
- List of higher-level goal "themes"
- Prioritized list of goals
Participants
- Use on your own
- Up to 12 participants
- For more than 12, split into groups
Materials
- Some way to collect ideas
- Some way to group ideas together
- Somewhere to collect them like a dry erase board or physical or digital wall
Templates and facilitation materials
Download Goal mapping templates and facilitation guide
project-goal-mapping.pptx (188.02 kB). Last modified 07/02/23
DownloadGoal mapping canvas template (Mural)
Use Mural templateLearn more
Facilitation tips and instructions
Austin Govella provides detailed instructions and facilitation tips for Goal Mapping in chapter six of his book, Collaborative Product Design. You can view chapter six online via O’Reilly’s Safari Books.
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