Discuss the hierarchy of objectives? Also differentiate between general and specific objectives? Give examples in support of your answer.

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The hierarchy of objectives is a tool that helps analyze and communicate the project objectives. It organizes these objectives into different levels of a hierarchy or tree. Different organizations use different names for the various levels and the types of objectives at each level, but otherwise there is a great deal of similarity in approach. This approach organizes objectives into three broad levels:

• Policy
• Strategic, and
• Operational.

In general, these levels correspond to the top, middle, and working levels of management in an organization. Broad, general objectives, some people call them “goals”, that policymakers deal with, for example: “improve economic growth”, fall into the top level and are called “policy objectives”. Objectives that are narrower in scope, such as “increase literacy for teenage girls”, fall into the middle level and are called “strategic objectives”. Objectives that relate directly to a project’s deliverables fall into the operational level and are called “project objectives”. Objectives that relate to project inputs, i.e. what is needed to make a project function, are also considered operational and are called “input objectives”. Operational objectives are usually the concern of working management, including project managers.

Figure 1 shows an example of a hierarchy of objectives for an electric power plant. As shown, the hierarchy has four types of objectives: policy, strategic, project, and input and they are grouped into three levels: policy, strategic, and operational.

Policy Objective: The overall policy objective is to “Increase industrial production”. We then ask: How is this to be accomplished? That brings us to the next lower objective, the strategic objective.

Strategic Objective: One way that the country is trying to increase industrial production, the policy objective, is by producing “50 KW of electric power”. This is the strategic objective for the project. Of course, there may be other strategic objectives and additional projects that also support the overall policy objective. Again we ask: “How is the 50 KW of electric power to be obtained?” The answer takes us to the next lower level of objective in the hierarchy, i.e. the project objective.

Project Objective: The project objective in most cases is the same as the deliverable for the project. In this case, it is to “Build a new power plant.” Asking: “How is the power plant to be built?”, again takes us to the next lower level of objective, the input objective.

Input Objective: The input objectives relate primarily to the resources and conditions that are required to accomplish the project. For the power project, they consist of a “$10 million contract, land for the power plant, and necessary labor” as well as expertise

Differentiate between general and specific objectives:

Major difference between general objectives and specific objectives is that a general objective is a statement of the trend of the learning activity that describes the general orientation of a learning curriculum. A specific objective also defines the trend of the learning activity, but it is formulated in terms of observable behaviors. The general objective is the first level of specification derived from an aim.

Specific objective are usually expressed in terms of the student, and they are unequivocal, which means that they are expressed clearly and have only one interpretation. They also only describe behaviors that can be observed in the subject. UNESCO also indicates that specific objectives detail the unique conditions for the manifestation of certain behaviors and the criteria that must be met to determine whether the objective has been attained.

An example of a general objective is, “To make the student of information science capable of identifying the needs of users of a particular documentation system.” A specific objective derived from this general objective is, “The student must be able to identify different types of documentary information networks.” From these examples, it is evident that specific objectives are usually derived from general objectives.