Project Success - "Projects are like Chalk and Cheese"

This is the third part in my thoughts on Project Success:

• In part 1, I posed the question "How do you measure Project Success?"
• In Part 2, I explored Project Success from different perspectives and provided some links to sources that explored factors in project success and to improve the chance of success beyond serendipity.

The key points from the first two parts are:

• Project Success cannot be judged by the triple constraint.
• The triple constraint of time cost and scope only address the project efficiency dimension of success.x
• Different projects have different success measures depending on your point of view as a stakeholder
• Shenhar and Dvir identified five dimensions of success which could be used as a model to identify the success criteria for a project
• Success criteria has to be built into the project from the first step and then reflected in its plan, demonstrating how the project will deliver the outcome

I believe this evidence also points to the need for an organisation to develop its PM reward system to be based on more than just the traditional triple constraint. 

Wish for Serendipity, take advantage of the fluke, and never trust to dumb luck!

Of course we all want Serendipity to visit us on our projects, we welcome help from any source. A Project Manager can increase the chances of our friend Serendipity visiting the project by:

• Being alert, 
• noticing what others do not see, 
• putting together the project jigsaw as the new pieces emerge in the form of issues, ideas etc...

How does this all relate to project success?  

Successful projects do not just happen. A Project Managers career is going to be a short and painful one if they do not understand how to set up their projects to be successful. 

How do you measure Project Success?

Projects are everywhere in business and life and we have a myriad of books, professional bodies to help build skills and knowledge needed to manage a project. We are training and certifying project managers for their knowledge and understanding to ensure we have a professional to manage the project. But the consensus seems to be that we are still doing projects badly with 30% failing (depending on which figures you look at this could be as high as 70%). 

In these austere times we cannot afford to waste resources $ and peoples time on failures. We need to pick the right projects and we need them to be successful.

So if projects are still failing how can we (project management professionals) significantly improve the chances of success beyond the definitions and guidance written in the BoK's and Best Practices?  

I believe one thing we can do is create a common understanding of what is meat of project success and how we can significantly improve the project outcome to enable it to be successful.

Hence the subject for May will be to explore "Project Success" and how do we demonstrate it to the project stakeholders (which group care about what measures).