Measuring the Quality of the Project Management Process
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
What does quality project management mean? What does it look like? Can all project management be measured using the same metrics? What might those metrics be?
These are the kinds of questions that ramble around in my mind when trying to wrap my head around understanding the real issues related to measuring the quality of the way a project is managed. Here are some thoughts on the subject--if nothing else, a checklist that might help you with the designing of meaningful metrics for measuring the quality of your organization’s project management process.
As in most explorations, it seems logical to begin with baseline definitions; in this case, the definition of quality and the definition or project management. This might seem a bit remedial to some but, it is important to establish definitional foundation to work from in order to establish a rational framework for the discussion.
What is Quality?
According to the Merriam-Webster, quality is defined as “how good or bad something is” and “a high level of value or excellence”. Perhaps this is where the difficulty arises, as terms like “good”, “bad”, “value” and “excellence” are subjective. Thus, quality must have a context; something to be contrasted against.
For example, would an investment yielding 6% be a quality investment? The …
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