Aim
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- Last Updated on Thursday, 05 March 2015 20:08
DEVELOP AN AIM STATEMENT (Answers the question: What are we trying to accomplish?)
How many times have you been part of a project that lacks direction? Lack of direction and scope can lead to wasted resources, frustration, and even project failure. An aim statement acts as your compass to guide and focus your team's efforts. It is an explicit statement of the desired outcome of your improvement project. It is Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time bound. A good aim statement includes the following components:
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- Identify the problem and identify the overall goal (i.e. your long term outcome)
- Use words like improve, reduce, and increase
- Why is it important?
- This should answer the questions "so what?" or "why bother doing this project?"
- Who is the specific target population?
- Who or what area is the project focused on?
- When will this be completed?
- Include a specific time for completing the improvements (month/day/year)
- How will this be carried out?
- It is NOT a specific list of tasks/strategies you will do, instead what methods you will use at a high level (i.e. QI methods and principles, Bright Futures toolkit, etc.)
- What are our measurable goals?
- What are some processes and short term outcome goals that will help you know that you have achieved your overall project aim? (i.e., reduce wait time for child health clinic from 2 hours and 45 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes, increase customer satisfaction scores from 50% to 85%, etc.)
- Include 4-6 goals
- The goals are similar to SMART objectives--remember you want to have 'stretch' goals. For example, if your baseline data for time to process an application is 15 days you would not want to make your goal 12 days, because your team would not have to "stretch" to meet that goal.)
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