Define goals & commitments

Goals and commitments are the outcomes you’re accountable for in a scope. They keep the execution plan oriented even as tasks change, priorities shift, and new information appears.

What goals & commitments are

In Parallel is built to maintain execution reality between goals and work. That only works if your scope has a small number of outcomes that anchor the plan.

Goals/commitments are those anchors:

They describe success for the scope.
They stay relatively stable compared to tasks.
They help you rank priorities and explain tradeoffs.
They make “what changed?” meaningful, because there’s a consistent reference point.

Important: This is not about writing a strategy document. It’s about naming the outcomes the scope is responsible for executing.

How they show up in the execution plan

The living execution plan typically includes:

goals and commitments
ranked priorities
tasks/milestones
risks/dependencies
ownership
recent changes

Goals/commitments sit near the top because they answer:

“What are we trying to accomplish in this scope?”
“What does ‘done’ look like?”
“What are we accountable for, even if the path changes?”

When meetings create new signals, the post-meeting report and snapshots help keep the plan aligned to these anchors.

How many goals/commitments should you have?

For most scopes, the sweet spot is 1–3 active goals/commitments.

Why so few?

Your plan is meant to be legible and ranked.
Too many anchors creates noise and weakens accountability.
You want tradeoffs to be explicit—more anchors makes “everything is important” feel true.

If you have more than 3, it’s often a sign that:

the scope is too broad, or
you’re mixing multiple cadences/outcomes that deserve separate scopes.

Tip: If you can’t rank priorities, reduce commitments or split the scope.

How to write a good goal or commitment

A good goal/commitment is:

outcome-oriented (not a task)
attributable (someone owns it)
bounded (clear timeframe or milestone)
measurable when possible (but not required)

Examples

Good

“Reduce onboarding time from 14 days to 7 days by end of Q2.”
“Deliver Customer X implementation with agreed milestones by March 15.”
“Stabilize platform reliability: error rate < 0.5% for 4 weeks.”

Too task-like

“Ship onboarding checklist”
“Run migration scripts”
“Send weekly update email”

Those may be actions or milestones, but they’re not outcomes.

A quick rewrite trick

If your goal starts with a verb like “build/ship/launch,” ask:

“What outcome does that create?”
“How will we know it worked?”
Then rewrite as that.

How goals relate to priorities and tasks

This separation is important for clarity:

Goals/commitments: the outcomes you’re accountable for.
Priorities: what matters most right now to move those outcomes forward (ranked, small set).
Tasks/milestones: the concrete work and checkpoints that support those priorities.

Your delivery tool (Jira/Asana/etc.) remains the system of record for execution detail. In Parallel keeps the plan coherent and explains changes over time.

Common mistakes (and fixes)

Mistake: Turning tasks into commitments

Symptoms:

goals read like a to-do list
it’s hard to rank priorities
stakeholders don’t know what success means

Fix:

rewrite tasks as outcomes
move the tasks into actions/milestones

Mistake: Having too many commitments

Symptoms:

everything stays “in progress”
the plan feels crowded
tradeoffs stay implicit

Fix:

cut down to 1–3 active commitments
move the rest into “later” or create another scope

Mistake: Commitments without ownership

Symptoms:

drift
no one feels responsible to update reality
tasks get created but not closed

Fix:

assign one accountable owner per commitment (even if many contribute)

Best practices

Keep commitments stable; let priorities and actions change.
Review commitments in your recurring meeting cadence.
Use snapshots to show how the plan evolved toward commitments (it keeps changes defensible).