Interesting, in my experience this really divides opinion. I've found that HR departments and some managers really like SMART development objectives, and it's easy to see why - they give the impression of a nice measurable controlled process. And for many of the years I was running engineering teams our annual review / objective setting process drove us to work with SMART objectives. The only problem was...generally they didn't work. The problem is that if they are used on an annual (or even six-monthly) basis, life has a habit of creating other plans. And it can be demoralising for staff to see year after year the same SMART objectives, which seem never to be met (because the opportunity hasn't arisen to follow it, because workload has got in the way, or because a different, and much more interesting / useful development opportunity arose).

That said, I have found SMART objectives are useful - provided they are very short term and targeted. Which as I understand it was the original idea. It's worth remembering that (as far as I understand it) they were designed for managing business (rather than personal) goals, where there would be an overall aim - e.g. "double the size of the business in 5 years" - and then short term SMART objectives to meet that goal. Somehow that idea of goals and objectives has got lost and muddled.

So taking the very common objective we get involved in, I'm sure many of us have either set for our staff or had set for us "achieve EngTech / IEng / CEng in 1/2/5 years", which appears to be a SMART objective, and in my experience it mostly fails *. What can work is setting a Goal of  "achieve EngTech / IEng / CEng", and maybe a sub goal of "strengthen competence C skills through project management experience", and then finally there's a chance of workable SMART objectives of "apply for and take part in distance learning management training", "contact projects A, B and C and express an interest in PM support / shadowing opportunities". It's harder work, because the objectives by definition are shorter term, so a soon as one's complete the follow-on one needs to be developed, but it can actually work.

P.S. my nadir with SMART objectives was when the company I worked for at the time linked achieving objectives with salary increase. So those of us managers who liked retaining our staff ended up just setting trivial objectives which we knew would be met anyway, which therefore missed the whole point. Fortunately the company was sensible enough to see that's what happened, and delinked them from salary again. 

So personally I'd put in a plea for a process along these lines:

1. Clear goal (e.g. apply for CEng)
2. Clear sub goals (strengthen competences A1, B2, C3)
3. Then step by step development by SMART objectives - where the mentor can help set each objective in turn to make sure it really is achievable. Some of these steps may be VERY small.

TWAVES I see flashed up on slides at IET conferences. That is my entire experience of it I explain it to applicants in words, but have never found a need for an acronym.

Hope that helps, just one view,

Andy

* It's interesting to think about why it fails. I'd suggest it's because the R part has too much of a dependency: "Realistic provided nothing else gets in the way and the right opportunities arise". And life's rarely like that. If SMART is to be used you need to be really tough on whether R has really been thought through completely. Which tends to drive you to short term objectives.

Interesting, in my experience this really divides opinion. I've found that HR departments and some managers really like SMART development objectives, and it's easy to see why - they give the impression of a nice measurable controlled process. And for many of the years I was running engineering teams our annual review / objective setting process drove us to work with SMART objectives. The only problem was...generally they didn't work. The problem is that if they are used on an annual (or even six-monthly) basis, life has a habit of creating other plans. And it can be demoralising for staff to see year after year the same SMART objectives, which seem never to be met (because the opportunity hasn't arisen to follow it, because workload has got in the way, or because a different, and much more interesting / useful development opportunity arose).

That said, I have found SMART objectives are useful - provided they are very short term and targeted. Which as I understand it was the original idea. It's worth remembering that (as far as I understand it) they were designed for managing business (rather than personal) goals, where there would be an overall aim - e.g. "double the size of the business in 5 years" - and then short term SMART objectives to meet that goal. Somehow that idea of goals and objectives has got lost and muddled.

So taking the very common objective we get involved in, I'm sure many of us have either set for our staff or had set for us "achieve EngTech / IEng / CEng in 1/2/5 years", which appears to be a SMART objective, and in my experience it mostly fails *. What can work is setting a Goal of  "achieve EngTech / IEng / CEng", and maybe a sub goal of "strengthen competence C skills through project management experience", and then finally there's a chance of workable SMART objectives of "apply for and take part in distance learning management training", "contact projects A, B and C and express an interest in PM support / shadowing opportunities". It's harder work, because the objectives by definition are shorter term, so a soon as one's complete the follow-on one needs to be developed, but it can actually work.

P.S. my nadir with SMART objectives was when the company I worked for at the time linked achieving objectives with salary increase. So those of us managers who liked retaining our staff ended up just setting trivial objectives which we knew would be met anyway, which therefore missed the whole point. Fortunately the company was sensible enough to see that's what happened, and delinked them from salary again. 

So personally I'd put in a plea for a process along these lines:

1. Clear goal (e.g. apply for CEng)
2. Clear sub goals (strengthen competences A1, B2, C3)
3. Then step by step development by SMART objectives - where the mentor can help set each objective in turn to make sure it really is achievable. Some of these steps may be VERY small.

TWAVES I see flashed up on slides at IET conferences. That is my entire experience of it I explain it to applicants in words, but have never found a need for an acronym.

Hope that helps, just one view,

Andy

* It's interesting to think about why it fails. I'd suggest it's because the R part has too much of a dependency: "Realistic provided nothing else gets in the way and the right opportunities arise". And life's rarely like that. If SMART is to be used you need to be really tough on whether R has really been thought through completely. Which tends to drive you to short term objectives.