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). 


The sources for this months posts are:

Reinventing Project Management: The Diamond Approach to successful growth and innovation - published by Harvard Business Review - Authors Shenhar and Dvir 

Project Planning and Project Success—The 25% Solution: - published by CRC  - Author Pedro Serrador, PHD

Both books are available from Amazon and Project Planning and Project Success is available on Books 24x7 if you have access.

Over the next four weeks we will be exploring the definitions of success, the how the different PM processes and tools contribute to success with the intention of identifying the attributes of project management that greatly increases the chances for success. 

I will be publishing weekly and at the end of the month I will create a summary of the findings and comments. 

The first question is, what is project success?

• Is it delivering the project to satisfy the iron triangle (Cost, Time, Scope/Quality) ? 

• or is it meeting or exceeding stakeholder expectations and if so which stakeholders are the most important?

In legal terms, on-time, within budget and delivered what was specified is classed as success. The Body's of knowledge used this as a mantra for years, however gradually they are moving to include some additional attributes of success. Such as "Customer Satisfaction", "Achieving the business outcome in the business case". 

We often hear the project supplier use the words "the product was delivered on-time, within the cost and to your specifications". This may be true, but from the customer perspective still the project is seen as a failure because it doesn't really meet their needs.

Dimensions of Success Beyond the Iron Triangle

In "Reinventing Project Management" Chapter 2 Shenhar and Dvir identify five main dimensions of project success:

1. Project Efficiency (on-time, within budget and to specification)...
2. Impact on the Customer
3. Impact on the Team
4. Business and direct success
5. Preparation for the future

Serrador refers to similar dimensions of project success:

1. Project efficiency: Meeting cost, time, and scope goals; and 
2. Project success: Meeting wider business and enterprise goals.

He collected data on over 1,300 projects from 60 countries and conducted detailed statistical analysis and came to the conclusion that the 2 aspects of success are interlinked and the project shouldn't disregard either dimension of success. He states that Project Managers should consider building broader success criteria into their project definitions at the beginning.

Shenhar and Dvir highlight the broader success dimensions over the longer time period than the normal project timescale.

In my own observations I see that for projects to be successful they generally depend on two intertwined aspects of the project. 

1. Developing the solution of the problem or opportunity the organization has set as an objective.
2. Preparing the organization to adopt the solution so that it can take advantage of the new capabilities the solution provides.

Failure to prepare the organization for the new solution often creates challenges of adoption and therefore the longer term success. 

Over the next four weeks I will explore how the two books identify how to improve the chances of success for the projects and what practical steps project managers can take to enhance the chances for success in their projects.