What Drives Project Performance?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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Topics: Organizational Culture, Organizational Project Management, Sustainability, Talent Management

A new report from PMI is always a good read, and it’s always an inspiration to write some more articles! Maximizing Project Success is the latest, and it has some amazing insights in it. (Go take a look now, I’ll wait until you come back…)

How about that chart on page 22, the one that talks about the top performance themes? These were the factors (21 of them) that were deemed to contribute to project success. The top themes had the strongest relationship between delivering on them and overall project success. And the highest result (by quite some margin) was “sustainability and social impact.”

Am I surprised that it was an important factor? No. But I am surprised that it was No. 1. Sustainability and social factors are still viewed with suspicion in some organizations, perhaps many organizations. There are a number of reasons for that, and some would argue that it is a generational factor, but I think that’s too simplistic. I think it comes down to a lack of awareness of how much of a contributor to performance it is, or perhaps a lack of belief in that contribution.

That’s where research comes in. When credible organizations like PMI shine the spotlight on sustainability and social impact as a driver of performance (the biggest driver of performance in this case), more people will take notice. And more people will begin to …

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