Strategic, Intermediate, and Tactical Goals

Overview

• What you’ll learn: The three goal levels in EBM, how they connect to Scrum artifacts, how to set measurable goals at each level, and the relationship between goals and experiments.
• Prerequisites: Lesson 40 — What is EBM?
• Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Introduction

Without goals, improvement is random. You might get better at things that don’t matter while the things that do matter get worse. EBM defines three levels of goals to ensure that every experiment, every Sprint, every decision connects to something meaningful.

Strategic Goals

A Strategic Goal is the big picture — something an organization wants to achieve that will take months or years. It is aspirational and value-oriented.

Example: “Become the most trusted online learning platform for professional certifications in Asia-Pacific.”

Strategic Goals are similar to the Product Goal in Scrum (Lesson 26). In fact, the Product Goal is the strategic goal for the product. A Strategic Goal should be:

• Inspirational but measurable — you should be able to tell whether you are getting closer.
• Stable — it should not change every Sprint.
• Value-focused — it describes an outcome, not an output.

Intermediate Goals

Intermediate Goals are stepping stones toward the Strategic Goal. They represent what you need to achieve in the next weeks or months to make progress.

Example: “Increase course completion rate from 35% to 60% within Q2.”

Intermediate Goals are measurable, time-bound, and directly connected to the Strategic Goal. They answer: “What must be true for us to believe we are on track toward our Strategic Goal?”

Tactical Goals

Tactical Goals are the Sprint-level goals. They represent the experiments and work that the team will execute to pursue the Intermediate Goal.

Example: “This Sprint, implement personalized progress reminders and measure their effect on completion rates.”

Tactical Goals map directly to Sprint Goals. Each Sprint is an experiment: you hypothesize that certain actions will move you toward your Intermediate Goal, you execute them, and you measure the results.

The Goal Cascade

Strategic → Intermediate → Tactical creates alignment from boardroom to Sprint Backlog:

• The board sets the Strategic Goal.
• Product management defines Intermediate Goals.
• The Scrum Team creates Tactical Goals (Sprint Goals) that are experiments toward the Intermediate Goal.

Without this cascade, teams optimize locally (ship features) without knowing whether those features contribute to organizational success. You can ship 100 features and still fail if they are the wrong 100 features.

Key Takeaways

• Three goal levels: Strategic (months/years), Intermediate (weeks/months), Tactical (Sprint).
• Strategic Goals = Product Goals = aspirational and value-oriented.
• Intermediate Goals = measurable stepping stones.
• Tactical Goals = Sprint Goals = experiments toward intermediate goals.
• The cascade ensures every Sprint connects to organizational strategy.