Objectives and Success Criteria

Smart-A enquires:

We realise that objectives would be something very
general and success criterias are more specific
benchmarks along the way to these general objectives.
However, found it really difficult to find that line
that will distinguish one from another.

Now, this is fundamental, and also something that project workers of all levels have difficulty with.

User need What your customer wants to do
We want to detect water on Mars ... so we think we need detailed infra-red images of the surface to do Experiment A.

Objectives What you are going to provide in response
OK .. We will provide a spacecraft with an infra-red spectrograph, let's call it Instrument A. Did you hear about experiment B? (dialogue ensues ...)

Success Critera Ways of knowing that your response is an acceptable one
It will cost less then $1bn.
It will start operating in 2016 or earlier.
There will be 100 GB of data with technical quality parameters x, y, x ... etc
The data will let you detect water (experiment A), or apply experiment B, C etc