Good Mission Statements

Good missions, and Mission Statements, exclude alternatives. Useless ones try to express everything you might ever want to do.

We develop or install high-quality software , has no place in a Mission Statement, for example, because what other choice might you have expressed? The alternatives:

We develop or install mediocre software.

We develop or install awful software.

We refuse to develop or install any kind of software.

We d really like to develop and install software, only we ve forgotten how.

All are non-starters. Because the only statement you can make about software is that it will be high quality, don t waste the paper and toner.

— Bob Lewis

From the Book IS Survival Guide, 1999, ISBN 0672314371

Copyright © 1999 by Sams Publishing

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No. 140