I am a real proponent of writing clear goals and specific learning objectives for all levels of instructional design.
Goals: High level goals center a designer and developer in terms of direction. They help justify the development to those who need to buy into the concept. They explain "what's to come" in terms of the design and delivery. I have recently gone through a bit of this as I have changed the goal of training at the University from a professional development focus to a training focus. Outlined as a goal in the cover letter on our new Learning Opps catalogue, the goal is helpful in explaining the directional change to campus constituencies.
Objectives: While I don't think they are easy to write, I don't know how you could design or develop instruction without knowing where you think you need to land. All of our courses here have objectives attached - though some are less robust than I would like for various and sundry reasons.
Obviously, my model will employ a healthy dose of goals and objectives development. I think it's foundational, no matter the learning context.
