Performance Goals
Key Components
- Program goals
- "Goal Cascade": graphically show linkage from the National Energy Policy down through Department goals and EERE goals to the program goals. You can use the Goal Cascade template
to help you develop your own goal cascade.
Performance Goals set a target level of performance over time expressed as a tangible, measurable objective, against which actual achievement can be compared, including a goal expressed as a quantitative standard, value or rate. A performance goal is comprised of a Performance Measure with Targets and timeframes. Performance goals are output-oriented and more near-term, while strategic goals are outcome-oriented and can be longer-term.
As the program is developing its strategic and operational plans, it is also defining its performance goals. These are nothing more than a measurable statement of the program's overall goals. The performance goals should demonstrate the linkage with Administration goals and priorities as well as how the goals flow down from the mission statement and inform the success of the mission. Developing goals is a process toward defining the results the program intends to achieve over time. Goals are often the most visible and critical part of the program's planning process. Without proper program goals, the program will be unable to link performance with resource allocation and ultimate mission success.
The DOE Office of Management and Evaluation (ME) has developed the following checklist of goal characteristics that help to ensure that performance goals and measures are properly developed to meet a variety of planning and performance needs:
- Meaningful and Relevant
- Quantifiable
- Measurable
- Auditable
- Precise and Accurate
- Easily Understood
- Baselined
Elements of Best Practice:
-
Goals need to be clear, comprehensive, measurable, and verifiable. Goals should be set relative to an established baseline and have clear time frames, targets, and end points. The narrative accompanying these goals should describe how and, better still, how much the program contributes to achieving the stated vision (relative to other parties collaborating with the program).
-
Performance needs to be measured against a baseline. The baseline is fixed to a given year and performance value and becomes the benchmark from which progress with research and deployment is measured. A sound planning practice will keep the program attuned to changes in the baseline so that underlying assumptions are continuously reevaluated and tested.
-
The rationale for the program, and the program plan itself, are strengthened to the extent that a strong linkage can be demonstrated to higher-level goals within EERE and the Department. A good program plan will show a logical flow throughout that connects higher-level goals (e.g., NEP, DOE and EERE Strategic Plans). The relative contribution of the program to these higher-level goals, through quantification and measurement, is a sign of a well-developed planning process.
-
As a program plan cascades into greater detail, a good program plan and a set of performance goals will maintain this linkage so that goals within the plan are directly related to individual activities, outputs, and milestones. Ideally, the performance metrics contained in the plan can be readily adapted to external performance measurement systems and the budget request and in fact correspond. In a well-documented plan, this linkage should be plain to the casual observer.
-
EERE encourages the use of performance goals (viewed as outputs) over the use of market price/technology cost goals, since these outputs are within the control of the program while costs have many embedded assumptions, such as production scale, labor costs, learning, and inflation, over which EERE has no control. Cost (modeled or actual market) is a useful unit to include in program strategic goals, however and it is useful for the program to track progress on the relative cost of a technology to determine the course of the markets and the overall direction of the program toward reaching its vision.