Mehbub By design, SMART goals are a way to set yourself up for achieving and improving yourself in several areas.
However, with statistics proving that as little as 3% of people have written goals, why should you even try?
This thought process is precisely why I and others use the SMART goal system to help us build achievable and reliable goals, and it enables you to grow and expand what you can do.
According Google Trend, in September 2020, “Smart Goals” popularity was the highest in the United States.
In the programming industry, it is all too easy to reach a plateau where getting to the next level or improving your skills seems like too much work.
You become less of an asset to yourself and the business you work for at this point, so SMART goals are crucial for this industry.
What are SMART Goals
The word “SMART” is an acronym. It stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. A “SMART goal” is a specific way of writing down your plan, a key component of improving your chances of achieving any goal. While all goals should be measurable, SMART goals take other factors into account.
The word SMART is an acronym for;
Specific
Be very exact about what you would like to do and write it down precisely.
1) Learn a new programming language within six months and write at least three full-featured programs using this language.
2) Finish an open-source project I started last year. This was my first significant contribution.
3) Get promoted
Measurable
If you set an immeasurable goal, you are more likely to fail, not because you can’t achieve your goal, but because you don’t know how to measure it.
A simple way to make learning a new programming language measurable is to state how many times a week you want to do a specific activity, like do an online lesson.
To continue the example given above, we can expand it by saying: “I want to learn the Python Programming langue by completing an online lesson four times a week.”
Attainable
Consider whether you need more time to accomplish this goal.
You can always work towards making your goal attainable, but be realistic about when to stop. If you say you’ll learn for a week and then quit, you might never get there because you were too ambitious.
For example, saying that you want to learn PHP, Python, C#, and Java simultaneously is not a good goal since it is hardly attainable. Be clear with what you want and instead set a goal for one thing at a time.
Relevance
This asks whether the goal is relevant to where you are now.
Are you trying to become a developer who works with microservices and cloud technologies because they seem cool from reading books and watching videos? Or is it because you want to use those things?
If you don’t know what these technologies are, make sure you do some research to know which way to go.
Time-Bound
It is also essential to make your goal time-bound and limit the length of time you have to achieve it.
This dimension will help you learn a new programming language much faster than you would without a time limit.
A simple way to do this with our example is to complete the goal by saying:
✅ I want to learn the Python Programming langue by completing an online lesson four times a week. I aim to use this language to write a new app by September of 2022.
Types of SMART Goals For Programmers
First off, it is essential to clarify that you don’t have to be a senior software engineer before setting achievable goals as a programmer. It is best for everyone on a software engineering team or an individual programmer to set smart goes and smash them.
1. Technical Goals
Technical goals help you to set targets for improving your technical skills. It allows you to improve on the existing technical skills you have and learn new ones. Technical skills are vital in software engineering for moving high up in the career ladder.
✅ Setting a target of building and getting comfortable working backend on a site that can take up to one million requests per second.
✅ Improve your code coverage and fully facilitate a machine learning project from start to finish within 6 or 12 months.
✅ Revise the coding project of an app and reduce the loading time and complete it within a month
✅ Increase the bug detection rate of your codebase by a certain percentage by tweaking the bug detection code over a stipulated time (Usually within weeks)
✅ Take an online course membership for a particular programming language 2 times in a year
✅ Spend 5 minutes of your day trying to learn something new, such as an extension to a CSS framework or something you think might improve your coding skills and overall knowledge.
2. Leadership Goals
Most software engineers, especially those that work in a team hope to become the leader someday. Others even aim to become their own boss at some point in their career. However, it is almost impossible to achieve this without building yourself in the leadership space.
Leadership skills might also come in when you need to hire other people to succeed on a particular project. It includes progress on managing, motivating, and getting people to work towards a common goal.
✅ Hire new members on your team and make them achieve a level of success over the next six months or less.
✅ Divide workload among your team members and get each member to finish assigned tasks within a stipulated deadline.
✅ Go through at least one book on personal organization (such as David Allen’s Getting Things Done) and ensure you do this regularly.
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3. Testing Goals
Testing goals is one of the core practices of ambitious software engineers. Testing goals should include running unit tests and integration tests.
These goals will ensure that your products are always ready to go.
✅ Coding your entire unit tests in one framework and all your integration tests in another for the quarter.
✅ Self-teaching yourself a new programming language within a time-bound (let’s say next six months) to open your project to new testing platforms.
4. Entrepreneurial Goals
Every programmer or software engineer aims to make money with their skill while building their career. Smart entrepreneurial goals will help you to attain the level of the financial state you desire.
Aside from helping you become your own boss, it also set you on the path of financial freedom. You can also set entrepreneurial goals while working in a team.
✅ Spend 4 hours every week for the next five months to develop a new App that is capable of generating $25,000 revenue every quarter of the year.
✅ Start freelancing and work for at least ten companies within a year to gather multiple experiences.
✅ Spend 2 hours every week building your website if you need a career change
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5. Code Ownership Goals
Often, code ownership goals are set outside workspace capacities. It is a way to boost your confidence in your coding skills and work on a project within a reasonable time.
Relevant code ownership goals are measurable because you will get to teach your skills. Remember, you can’t teach what you don’t know.
✅ Teach or introduce a target number of students about software development within a stipulated time.
✅ Create a new platform and maintain at least 99% uptime on it over the next 12 months.
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6. Code Quality Goals
Like every other career or product, software engineers also pay attention to the quality of their codes. So, it is not all about writing numerous codes; the primary thing is writing quality codes with amazing functionalities.
Although flawless deliveries are almost impossible, you can always attain a near-perfect delivery. Besides, there is constant room for improvement, and learning never ends. So, as you set goals to write unique codes, keep the quality in mind as well.
✅ Ensure that all the first lines of codes are flawless over the next three months.
✅ Spend a stipulated time figuring out the error in codes written by someone else and ensuring they are error-free.
✅ Write a Complete Code Review of an Open Source Project
7. Debugging Goals
Debugging is one of the cores of software development. It helps to get rid of all the errors and flaws in codes. Debugging goals largely overlap with coding goals, code quality goals, and technical goals.
It is not just about ensuring that codes are without any bugs; it also includes using this fix to improve the software’s functionality.
✅ Over six months, work on debugging a real-time traffic checker to help users figure out traffic about 3 minutes earlier than they used to.
✅ Fix the bugs in a code software written by someone else. Target the number of software to work on within a stipulated time.
8. System design goals
System design overlaps almost all other goals listed above. You can barely talk about system design goals without reference to at least two or more of the other goals on this list.
However, system design points to a broader range of achievements.
It is a pointer to a general improvement in overall software function.
✅ Retouch all the code or software products you have written overtime to ensure that they are integrated with mainstream WordPress services within six months.
✅ Improve the overall functionality of all your software product within 12 months.
9. Networking Goals
Networking is one of the primary things that helps a developer to get better. Networking with people in your field will facilitate your development and speed up your movement up the career ladder. Networking goals will help you meet people of like minds in software engineering.
It includes meeting people in your category, people high up the ladder, and those who might want to look up to you. You can even decide to get a mentor with this process.
✅ Have lunch or dinner with at least three senior web developers every month and discuss exploring possible software engineering opportunities.
✅ Attend at least five conferences for software engineers in three months to meet people of like minds in your career path.
