ITIL : Purpose vs Goals vs Objectives

As I was reading one of  the official ITIL V3 books, I came across the section tile “Purpose, goals, and objectives.” In my heart, I know that there is a difference, but in my head, the distinction is not quite clear.

The text of the ITIL book – the one I was reading was Service Transition – definitely separates the three into different sub-sections. From section 4.2.1 Purpose, goals, and objectives:

• “The purpose of the Change Management process is to ensure that […]”
• “The goals of Change Management are to […]”
• “The objective of the Change Management process is to ensure that […]”

Varied discussions on this matter already exist, but I’ll attempt to consolidate the ideas in a way that is relevant to ITIL usage. At the very least, I should have an idea for myself on what the differences are.

In the ITIL 2011 English Glossary, only objective is defined so let’s start with that.

The outcomes required from a process, activity or organization in order to ensure that  its purpose will be fulfilled. Objectives are usually expressed as measurable targets. (Emphasis added)

I think the ITIL authors had “measurable targets” in mind when they worded the different objectives, although this is not readily obvious at first. Example, for change management, the objective of the process is to “…ensure that changes are recorded, and then evaluated, authorized, prioritized, planned, tested, implemented, documented, and reviewed in a controlled manner.” Maybe “planning” per se is not measurable, but controlling it is. For example a service provider can have an electronic record that documents the planning done and the process owner can measure the percentage of changes with such electronic record.

Dictionary.com defines a goal as “the result or achievement toward which effort is directed” or for our case, toward which an objective is directed. It appears to me then that goals are what I want to achieve while objectives are how I get to the goals. From this definition at least, we can say that objectives are more specific than goals.

One of the goals of change management is to “[r]espond to the customer’s changing business requirements while maximizing value and reducing incidents, disruption, and re-work.” There is a lot more to this statement, but for instruction purposes, in simplistic terms:

• What we want to achieve (Goal): Respond to changes while maximizing value and reducing incidents
• How we want to achieve (Objective): Ensure that changes are processed in a controlled manner

Almost in the entire text, whenever they are mentioned, our terms in question are presented in this sequence: (1) Purpose (2) Goals (3) Objectives. In a way, it’s parallel to going from general to specific. Purpose is the general term and can be described as the “why”. As stated in the aforementioned section, a purpose of change management – or the reason for having a change management process in place – is to ensure that “[o]verall business risk is optimized.” Adding this to our earlier summary, we get:

• Why implement the process (Purpose): Ensure that risk is optimized.
• What we want to achieve (Goal): Respond to changes while maximizing value and reducing incidents.
• How we want to achieve (Objective): Ensure that changes are processed in a controlled manner.

There is of course an overlap in the definitions of the words. Depending on where these words are applied (i.e. outside ITIL), they may even be interchangeable. However, I think that the distinction described above will come in handy when applying ITIL .