Take Another Look at Project Success Measures

May 20th, 2003 by Hal

Bill Duncan, original author of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK®), wrote a concise article, METHODS AND MEANS: For Good Measure, in the May/June Projects@Work journal. Bill covers the bases providing both a context for measuring project success and guidelines for developing useful metrics that matter.

I suggest we step back from the usual success criteria of cost schedule, and customer satisfaction. While performance in these areas matter, they are the result of doing other things well. Try these:

What is the point or mission of the whole project? We might describe it as design and build something, or we could describe the mission in terms of the overall value created for the customer. Why the latter? Because even project missions can be expected to change over the project life. The customer learns, the team learns, circumstances change, and life happens.
What is the reliability of task completions? When team members' work completes as expected others' work is released as planned.
How are we doing learning and adjusting to the ever-changing project circumstances? Are we innovating? Are people growing in their roles? Is the customer getting more value than expected?

Take another look at your project measures. Focus on the variables not just outcomes.

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One Response to “Take Another Look at Project Success Measures”

Dr. Gerald Mulenburg Says:
August 19th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I couldn’t get the link to work to get to the article mentioned
METHODS AND MEANS: For Good Measure.

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