SMART Goals For Creative Projects: Is It Possible?
- Adilla
- Jun 13
- 5 min read
Most creatives struggle to establish a clear structure in their creative work. Setting up deadlines and a schedule is one thing, but what guarantees they will stick to the very end of the project?
If your concern is whether your creative workflow would be stifled because of structure, you’d be surprised to find out that constraints help the creative mind. So why should creatives pick up a method that is usually used by businesses and data-centric organisations?
Table of Contents
How to Implement SMART Goals in Creative Projects
Alright, so first of all, what are SMART goals, and is goal-setting difficult? Keep in mind, this could also work with art projects in general, too!
Specific
When making a goal, it has to be specific. You can utilise the 4 Ws and 1 H when trying to pinpoint your goals. For example, you can ask yourself questions like:
What are you trying to achieve?
What needs to be done by the end of the project?
Who’s responsible for making this happen? (If you are in a large creative project)
What actions are necessary to accomplish it?
When should this project be finished?
Where should this project be produced or showcased?
By being specific, you can hold yourself accountable for the goal you are trying to achieve now that you know the finer details of it.
Measurable
This part is where you put the numbers in your goal to make sure you’ll be able to track it and reach your goals. How long should a specific task take? 3 days? And would it be enough time to reach its end goal?
By putting measurable goals in art projects or your creative projects, you’ll be able to see what a realistic expectation or timeline of how a project should be.
Achievable
This is where you question yourself if your goal is achievable in the measurable timeline that you have set. As you go through your project goals and set schedule, is it reasonably achievable with you and your team? If it’s not, what should be changed? The goal or the timing.
It is also best to keep in mind the risks that could arise when the project progresses. Do you have enough time if an issue arises mid-project? Do you have enough buffer time to fix it without jeopardising the end date of the project?
Relevant
Now, this is where we need to look at the big picture. Is it relevant to be working on your project in that current timeline? Does it fit well with the current industry trends? If you’re doing a marketing strategy, will it be suitable for the social media platform that you want to execute on?
When you go through these questions, you can prevent any wasted resources, whether from your team’s time and energy or a financial standpoint.
Time-Bound
The last part of the acronym is where you will have to make sure the work is bound by the time, so to speak. This is where you and your team have to take accountability for whether a project is progressing according to schedule and everything is done before the set deadline.
Why SMART Goals Work for Creatives
Now that you know what a SMART goal is, you can see how this can help structure the chaos of a creative project. This method helps alleviate the clutter and uncertainty of a project by setting objectives for creatives.
This helps reduce miscommunication and the feeling of uncertainty when progressing with your project. Hence, making you and your team hold yourselves accountable with your responsibilities now that you know what needs to be done and when it should be done.
Use TESSR to Track Your SMART Goals
With every goal you create, you need to be able to track it. Our TESSR project management software makes tracking creative work easier.
TESSR Woohoo
This module assists project managers in tracking the overall progress of their projects. By having this feature, leaders can make informed decisions, as they can analyse and gain insights into where they can improve in their project progression. Other than that, they can see the workload of each of their team members to ensure everyone has a balanced and well-planned workload.
Read more: Woohoo | Features | TESSR
TESSR My Work
In the My Work module, team members will be able to track their progress and check their assigned tasks. This will help them stay organised and be on top of their work. This feature could also categorise your tasks and be filtered in a specific time range, so you can even track your previous work and see how much you have progressed.
Read more: My Work | Features | TESSR
TESSR Review
If you are in a large creative team, you would need a communication channel where you can review and give constructive feedback to each other. This module not only assists in collaborating with your team; images and videos can be uploaded so your team can do visual annotations and contextual comments when providing feedback.
Read more: Review | Features | TESSR
Conclusion
While the SMART goal method is commonly used by businesses and projects with quantifiable data, it can be tweaked to be used for creative projects. Rather than seeing structure as a limitation to your creative workflow, creatives can see it as an opportunity to be innovative in a structured space.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Are there other methods besides SMART goals that creatives can use?
There are other goal-setting approaches creatives can use, like PACT (Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, Trackable), WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan), FAST (Frequent, Ambition, Specific, Transparency), and OKRs (Objectives, Key Results).
Would project management work better once I set up my project’s SMART goal?
Yes, definitely. Structuring out your project timeline would be easier once you are clear about what you want with your project with a SMART goal.
Why is it important to structure your goals?
Not only will it help you direct your focus to progressing your project, but it will also help you find clarity and a sense of achievement when you have a checklist of what you should do for your project.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies like parodies of animated shows and plots for board games. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Now an advocate for mental health and effective project management for the creative industry. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
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