Objectives and outcomes

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated May 5, 2026
  • 1 minute to read

    • The value management lifecycle begins with Objectives and outcomes which form its foundation.

    Business objective
    Your high-level business goals with ServiceNow, including operational goals.
    Business outcome
    To help measure your progress toward an objective, each business objective is connected to one or more measurable operational outcomes: the business value your organization gains from deploying ServiceNow capabilities.
    Success metric
    Each outcome is tied to a metric that records your progress over time, quantifying the improvement delivered.

    Select your objectives and outcomes with your executive sponsor or line-of-business leader, aligned to your organization's current priorities. Review the success metrics tied to each outcome to understand how Impact will monitor your progress and demonstrate value.

    How it works

    Use Objectives and outcomes to track the goals you want to pursue and the metrics that measure progress toward them. You can view your active standard objectives and outcomes on the Manage objectives and outcomes page, where tracked and untracked objectives are displayed along with their success metrics and product lines.

    The Objectives and Outcomes page provides the following capabilities:
    • Select which objectives and outcomes to track, and turn tracking on or off so that the page reflects only current priorities.
    • View the full picture for each outcome, including its success metric, product line, driver, and the capabilities that best support the intended vision.
    • Represent transformation progress through operational performance and value reports.
    • Establish a baseline and a target. Every outcome has a reference quarter and a goal, providing a benchmark for measuring performance over time.
    • Compare a selected business objective under the same product across multiple ServiceNow instances, using the Instance filter on the Objectives and Outcomes and Outcome Insights pages.

    Outcomes versioning also carry an outcome model either Standard or Enhanced. Outcome model distinguishes between the standard and enhanced sets of outcome definitions in the Impact Value App, helping you track performance consistently and interpret your results accurately. For more information, see Outcome versioning in Impact.

    Use the Tracking and Progress state columns to view whether an outcome is actively being tracked and its current progress. The Outcome name, Success metric, Product line, and Driver columns provide context about what each outcome measures and where it fits your value framework.

    The Reference quarter and Goal columns establish the baseline and target for each outcome, giving you a clear benchmark for evaluating performance over time.