The New New Project Success Measure

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

  Agile   Communications Management   Cost Management   Schedule Management   Scheduling   Talent Management  

Project success can be an intangible quality. We can measure things like on schedule, on budget, full scope and high quality, but these often miss the X-factor of true project success--or fail to explain where projects go adrift.

September’s Project Management Journal (the research magazine from PMI that has lots of equations, lists of references and not many pictures) has an excellent article on measuring project success. Instead of the normal on budget, on schedule, to scope and quality-type metrics, it takes an organizational view of success.

Authors Neil Alderman and Chris Ivory were looking for new ways of understanding success that departed from standard bodies of knowledge. They recognized taxonomies of project management practices missed the equally important social and political aspects of managing projects. They felt this was especially true for complex and emerging projects where people are “feeling their way” toward a solution rather than following a reliable blueprint to the goal.

Large projects are complicated, and when dealing with divergent stakeholder groups they become downright complex. Engaging in these complex projects creates considerable management and organizational challenges in building and maintaining extended stakeholder networks. Rather than simply ensuring the execution of work packages, project managers need to …

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