System goals are usually defined by the Product Owner and other Stakeholders and describe the objectives the system has to attain within the environment it is going to be deployed in. Such goals can be refined into more fine-grained sub-goals that describe the different aspects that have to be taken into consideration to achieve the over-arching goal.

Top-level System goals are defined early on in the process and specify the scope of the system. They are often the basis for the contract between the client and the development company and should thus be relatively stable. Changes in the top-level system goals usually propagate down the goal hierarchy and can therefore have disruptive consequences.