3 Principles for Project Metrics
From the The Money Files Blog
by Elizabeth Harrin
A blog that looks at all aspects of project and program finances from budgets, estimating and accounting to getting a pay rise and managing contracts.
Written by Elizabeth Harrin from RebelsGuideToPM.com.
Recent Posts
How to learn AI the sensible way
Making sense of project cost reports
How real PM mentoring actually works
The Accidental Product Manager: What project managers need to know
How healthy are your project finances?
Categories
accounting,
agile,
ai,
appraisals,
Artificial Intelligence,
audit,
Backlog,
Benchmarking,
benefits,
Benefits Management,
Benefits Realization,
Bias,
books,
budget,
Business Case,
business case,
business case,
Career Development,
Career Development,
carnival,
case study,
Change Management,
checklist,
collaboration tools,
communication,
Communications Management,
competition,
complex projects,
Conferences,
config management,
consultancy,
contingency,
contracts,
corporate finance,
corporate finance,
cost,
Cost Management,
cost management,
credit crunch,
CRM,
data,
data security,
debate,
Decision Making,
delegating,
digite,
earned value,
Education,
Energy and Utilities,
Estimating,
events,
FAQ,
financial management,
financial management,
forecasting,
future,
GDPR,
general,
Goals,
Governance,
green,
Information Technology,
Innovation,
insurance,
interviews,
it,
Knowledge Management,
Leadership,
Lessons Learned,
measuring performance,
Mentoring,
merger,
methods,
metrics,
multiple projects,
negotiating,
Networking,
news,
Olympics,
organization,
Organizational Culture,
outsourcing,
personal finance,
Planning,
pmi,
PMO,
PMO,
Portfolio Management,
portfolio management,
presentations,
privacy policy,
process,
procurement,
product management,
productivity,
Program Management,
project closure,
project data,
project delivery,
Project Success,
project testing,
prototyping,
qualifications,
Quality,
quality,
Quarterly Review,
records,
recruitment,
reports,
requirements,
research,
resilience,
Resource Management,
resources,
risk,
Risk Management,
ROI,
salaries,
Schedule Management,
Scheduling,
scope,
Scope Management,
security,
small projects,
Social Impact,
social impact,
social media,
software,
software,
software,
Stakeholder Management,
stakeholders,
Strategy,
success factors,
supplier management,
team,
Teams,
testing,
testing,
timesheets,
tips,
training,
transparency,
trends,
value management,
vendors,
video,
virtual teams,
workflow
Date
On your project you will have a number of measures and metrics. Key performance indicators (KPIs), critical success factors (CSFs) or success criteria and benefits can all be measured, and you may have some other targets to achieve as well such as customer satisfaction measures.
So what makes a good metric?
According to John Seddon in Freedom from Command and Control: A better way to make the work work, there are 3 principles for making sure your metrics are robust and useful.
1. Does it help understanding?
Seddon believes that the test of a good measure is that it helps us understand and improve performance. If it doesn’t, there isn’t much point in gathering the data. Targets, for example, are measures that don’t help us understand performance. They are arbitrary figures, created perhaps on a whim. Worse, they can focus people on the wrong things, and not on how best to do the work.
Capability measures look at the system of work (in a systems thinking environment), so they encourage people to look at how things are done and therefore they help improve the work. They can be more motivating than arbitrary targets.
In a project setting, by this definition a target held by the Project Management Office of closing 10 projects each quarter is not a good metric. A measure of how long it takes to complete the testing phase is useful, as that gives you data you can compare across a number of projects. Then you can draw some conclusions as to why some projects have a longer testing phase than others and in turn this will help with your estimating.
2. Does it relate to purpose?
The second test of a good measure, according to Seddon, is that the measure must relate to “the purpose of an organisation from the customers’ point of view”. In other words, measures must relate to something that means something to someone.
In a project environment, the person who is likely to be deciding what is important is your main project stakeholder or sponsor. Whatever matters to them is the thing you should be focusing on. For a project manager, this could be the triple constraint in the form of the time-cost-quality triangle. Or you could be told that the response times on the new website you are building are the most important thing and the sponsor wants reports every month about how much you have been able to improve them by. A lot of project measurements don’t actually relate back to what internal and external customers care about, so it is worth looking at what your project is measuring and checking that you aren’t wasting your time.
For more about what customers care about and how you can identify what is important to them, my book, Customer-Centric Project Management, includes a couple of case studies and some templates.
3. Does it integrate with the work?
The third test of a good measure is that it is easy enough to record. If it doesn’t integrate with the way that the work is done, no one will collect the data. That’s true enough – I’m sure you have occasionally been asked to produce reports and have struggled to find a way to represent the data or even to find it, as it isn’t ‘natural’ to be capturing project information in that way.
Seddon also believes that metrics that look backwards aren’t much help. Making decisions based on data that was captured in the past isn’t a good way to plan work going forward. I don’t agree – in a project environment capturing lessons learned, time measures and data that will help future estimates is, in my opinion, a good use of time. But I do see what he means in a service environment. His book is aimed at people in a call centre-type service organisation or manufacturing, where knowing that last week you answered 30 calls an hour or built 60 widgets doesn’t give you an accurate prediction of what will happen this week.
How many of your project measurements meet Seddon’s 3 criteria? And if they don’t adhere to these principles, are you happy about why not?
Posted on: May 17, 2013 04:53 AM |
Permalink
Comments (3)
Please login or join to subscribe to this item
Naomi Caietti
Senior Project Manager | ePMO | Higher Education | Healthcare & IT| Linkedin.com/In/NaomiCaietti
Elizabeth:
Certainly enjoy your blog. In my personal experience with projects, program and portfolio this is certainly a timely topic. I''d suggest that KPIs are most useful during the project to ensure the major project milestones and deliverables are on target to ensure success. KPIs should provide a PM with a measurement/threshold to indicate necessary adjustments that should be made for the product of the project. I view CSFs as more of a predictor of expected outcomes; a vision if you will to ensure successful project delivery. KPIs should align with CSFs to help project teams identify what critical outcomes are expected to meet stakeholder and customer expectations for the product or program. Seddon''s principles seem reasonable to scale from a small to large project. What''s that old saying..."You can''t manage what you don''t measure." - Drucker
Lisa Schwaller
IT Project Professional & Master Coach| Strong Betty, LLC
Katy, Tx, United States
Many teams attempt to collect "everything" to avoid missing out on data that might, maybe, eventually meet one of the 3 principles described. I think it''s simply good planning to be deliberate about what will be collected and why when designing project metrics.
On my projects, KPI are designed to see how effectively our project is running, while CSFs are how we can measure benefits realized after implementation. One challenge I have in my current environment is coaching teams to define success in measurable terms. When assessing projects, I see initiation documents with vague, optimistic, and downright wishy-washy CSFs. Project managers in some environments are hesitant to use KPIs at all because it would increase transparency into team effectiveness. In a blame-oriented culture, this can feel threatening.
I believe that good data feeding well-designed metrics is essential to growing the capability of an organization, and I hope we''re trending to systems that will give us better feedback more quickly.
Love your blog, Elizabeth. Overall, would you endorse Seddon''s book?
Lisa, thanks for the comment. There are some good bits in the book, but no, overall I wouldn''t recommend it for project managers as it is too focused on call-centre type processing environments and there are too few parallels with the non-repetitive work that we do. I have a full book review of it scheduled for publication on my main blog,
A Girl''s Guide to Project Management, on July 15th, plus a giveaway later that month, so you can read more about it and enter the draw to win a copy then, if you like.
Please Login/Register to leave a comment.
|
"The reason why worry kills more people than hard work is that more people worry than work."
- Robert Frost
|
