Beginning in 1948, a group of educators undertook the task of classifying education goals and objectives. The intent was to develop a classification system for three domains: the cognitive, the affective, and the psychomotor. Work on the cognitive domain was completed in the 1950s and is commonly referred to as Bloom's Taxonomy of the Cognitive Domain
SMART is a mnemonic, giving criteria to guide in the setting of objectives, for example in project management, employee performance management and personal development.