Project goals alignment: ask five people why your project exists
Updated: 20 hours ago
Project goals alignment means everyone working on a project gives the same answer to one question: why does this project exist?
Most teams believe they have it. There was a kickoff, a deck with the goal on the second slide, and everyone nodded.
The quickest way to find out is to ask.
How do you test project goals alignment?
Pick a project you're running now and ask five people who work on it the same question, one at a time: "Why does this project exist?"
Ask separately, so nobody repeats the answer they just heard.
Write down what each person says, then put the five answers side by side.
If you get one answer five times, the why is set. If you get five answers that sound related but aren't the same, you've found something important. One person says it's about retention, another about a big customer's request, a third about catching up with a competitor.
Nobody is wrong.
They just heard different versions of the same meeting.
That isn't a people problem. Each person is working from their own picture of why the project exists, and nobody has checked whether the pictures match.
Why do the answers come out different?
Because most project goals are written as a direction, not a destination.
"Improve onboarding" is a direction. Everyone can agree with it, which is exactly the problem. An engineer hears "make it faster," a designer hears "make it simpler," a stakeholder hears "make it convert more trials." All three are improving onboarding, and they're building toward different things.
"Cut onboarding time in half for new teams" is a destination. You can check it, and you can tell whether a feature request moves you closer.
A direction sends everyone to the same city. A destination sends them to the same house. In a city, every small decision fills the gap in its own direction, and that's where drift starts, before any of the work does.
What does a why that survives the first change look like?
It has three parts, written down before work starts:
Why the project exists. The problem it solves, and for whom.
What it will deliver. Specific enough that someone outside the team could check whether it shipped.
The return you expect. What it should bring the company and its customers.
The test for each part: when the first change request arrives, can you hold the request against it and get a clear answer? "Does this move us toward cutting onboarding time in half?" is answerable. "Does it improve onboarding?" isn't.
Then the step teams skip: everyone who will work on the project signs on to the written version, with room to argue first.
Disagreement at kickoff is cheap.
Disagreement discovered at launch isn't.
Book your free project audit: an opportunity score on one of your projects.
See how one of your projects holds up.
How do you keep the why after kickoff?
Projects change, and they should. The difference is whether each change is checked against the why or just absorbed. When something new is asked, the question is simple: does this still serve why the project exists? If yes, good. If not, the request waits, or the why changes on purpose, with everyone agreeing to the new version.
That's what Truvle is built for.
Truvle won't let a project start until the team agrees on why it exists, what it will deliver, and the return you expect. The result: everyone on the project can say why it exists, and they say the same thing.
Thanks for reading.
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