Hi Rebecca.

To introduce myself.  I'm the Product Manager for the Totara Talent Experience.  

There's a raft of changes in Competency and Perform that will be ideal.  There's plenty of academy courses that can guide you.  I'll just highlight the ideas I think are relevant

Competency 

One of the big differences in TXP+Perform for competency is competency Assignment. 

https://help.totaralearning.com/display/TH15/Competency+assignment

This removes the need to assign competency using a learning with assigning competency using audiences/positions/organisations.  The advantages of using audiences is of course that membership is dynamic so a user's assigned competencies will move as they move between audiences (as they progress their apprenticeship)

You can also setup competency proficiency to change based on assignment groups.  E.g.  A newcomer may be proficient at L1 of a competency, and a master tradesperson @ L5.  Thus the same competency can be used as skills develop.

Performance Activities

Performance activities offer a review question type.  

https://help.totaralearning.com/display/TH15/Adding+review+item+question+type

In this question type competencies can be selected and the competency content is displayed in the questionnaire.  Participants in the questionnaire can then rate the subject competence in 2 ways; 1.  as a set of ratings for consideration (the questionnaire will present rating scales that are the selected competency's rating scale),  and 2.  as a competency rating that changes the rating on the competency.

Similarly you can review Goals using the review question type.

Repeating Reviews

You can setup a performance activity to repeat based on a number of criteria
see the activity instance creation settings section here

Goals vs Objectives

These effectively act as analogs.  The objectives system in learning Plans predates Goals.  As I've stated Goals however can be reviewed in a repeating performance activity, so in your case this offers more

The future

In case this matters.  As the Talent Product Manager UI see Learning Plans evolving from their current form as a way to link users to competencies and Goals to a mechanism to present a learner's Learning Development plan.  So a shift to expressing the work a learner has been assigned as a set of Learning Goals for the next period.  

But that's just my thoughts.

Please use the academy courses to get a feel for these ideas and don't hessite to speak to your Totara partner or us about getting a demo.

Ad of course I'm happy to answer any questions you may have now.