7 Guidelines for Meaningful Project Performance Management

 

I've been asked about this recently, and thinking about it on my own too for my own teams.  Here are some guidelines I suggest for myself and others to evaluate existing cultures and create new  project performance measurement processes that are meaningful and do what you want them to do.

1.  What Adds Value?

Measure only what gives a true picture of performance and adds value.  What impacts the bottom line?  Are you REALLY going to use the data you are gathering?  If not, why are you gathering it?

2. Don't Measure Everything

Project managers can be a controlling bunch.  Many of us want to measure EVERYTHING.  In my experience, there are probably around 3 things you want to measure some aspect of.  Not much more, and not much less.  This has held true for me across multiple industries and some examples from my past include a) cycle time/velocity b) customer/stakeholder satisfaction and c) on-time delivery.

3.  Stay Out of the Weeds

I've seen detailed gathering of performance metrics you wouldn't believe.  Be very aware of the balance between level of detail and the effort/morale of the team to report the detail.  If people start asking for a new charge code to account for the time they are spending accounting for their time, you've gone too far!

4.  Consistency

Be consistent.  "Flavor of the month" means gaming the system, not a focus on performance.  Whatever your objectives are, they had better have a life span of more than a month or a quarter.

5.  Beware of Gaming

Beware of gaming the system.   If possible measurements should be so transparent that gaming is not possible.  Self-report data is prone to this, even unintentionally and subconsciously.  This is why objective measures like physical percent complete and cost/schedule performance data from an external group is so important.

6.  Focus on Methods

Don't use metrics for an incentive program of any kind.  For instance, don't penalize people in any way for their estimates being wrong.  If you want to get better at doing estimates, great.  Focus on methodology, not who was close or not close on their estimates.  Use the results as an indicator for what is working and what needs improvement.

7.  Eliminate Internal Competition

If your performance management system is generating competition between individuals or teams, you're doing it wrong.  In the call center world you see this all the time with "contests" that pit teams or sites against each other.  These result in animosity towards competetors and incent a decrease in quality in favor of whatever the "flavor of the month" stat is you are touting in the contest.  They usually create the appearance of performance.

"Hey, what do you know?  We made call handle time a key metric in this contest, and our average call handle time went down!  Yippie!"  (You're doing it wrong)

Customers, teams, and organizations lose.