An objective a reviewer cannot tell you succeeded or failed at is worthless to them. That is the whole test. Before you write anything else in the technical volume, draft your objectives and ask, for each one, whether a stranger reading your final report could say plainly whether you hit it. If the answer is no, the objective is an aspiration, and aspirations do not score.
Bounded and testable, not directional
Vague objectives sound ambitious and read as filler. Compare two versions of the same aim.
Weak: "Objective 2: Improve the sensor's accuracy and demonstrate that the approach is viable."
Strong: "Objective 2: Demonstrate that the prototype sensor holds measurement error within plus or minus 2 percent of a reference instrument across the full operating temperature range, on at least 20 samples."
The second names a quantity, a method of comparison, a range and a sample count. A reviewer can picture the bench, and can picture the sentence in your final report that reports the result. It also tells the panel you have thought about what "works" means, which is a large part of what they are actually assessing when they score feasibility.
Each objective should carry four things: the thing being established, the quantitative threshold, the method used to establish it, and the conditions under which it must hold. Where a number genuinely cannot be set in advance, say what you will measure and say that the threshold will be fixed against a named baseline. That is honest and scoreable. "We will explore" is neither.
How many objectives fit a phase
Three to five is the range that fits a feasibility phase comfortably. Two often reads as thin; seven signals that you are describing a program rather than a short project, and reviewers will suspect none of them can be finished in the period of performance. The objectives also have to fit the money and the calendar, and both are set by the agency's current solicitation rather than by any figure you read in an article. The scope difference between the phases is covered in Phase I versus Phase II.
Order them so that the riskiest one comes early. If Objective 1 fails, the reviewer wants to see that you learn it in the first months and not the last week. That ordering also makes your work plan easier to believe.
Keep them consistent everywhere
The objectives are the spine of the whole proposal. Every task in the work plan should trace to one; every success criterion should attach to one; every line of labor in the budget should be doing something an objective asked for. Reviewers notice when a task exists that no objective needs, and they notice an objective with no task under it. Later, the same list becomes the basis for what you report to the agency, as described in grant reporting and milestones.
If your objectives read like the goals of a feasibility study rather than a product roadmap, you are on the right track, and the scoring criteria will reward it.
Projects House helps founders convert an engineering concept into objectives with real numbers behind them. Start with the contact form.