Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
I have delivered the scope, deadlines within budget. I have documented the lessons learned and am ready for the next project ? Wait a second.. is my project a success ? What are the criteria that make a project a success? Is it only the iron triangle ? Saving Changes...
The only possible answer to this question is: a project is successful if it meets the requirements set for it. For example, if the main goal of the highway construction project was to enable the transfer of money to specific companies - then the project will be successful when the right amount of money is wasted. If the goal of the project is to divert attention from the failures of other projects - then it will be a success if it suffers a great failure.
In addition, there is a well-known classification of project successes:
• Managerial success (scope, schedule, budget)
• Project product success (product is used by intended users)
• Business success (product fulfills business requirements) Saving Changes...
Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
Oct 24, 2019 12:17 PM
Replying to Stéphane Parent
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It depends on whether the project success is measured by its output or its outcome. You can deliver a product or service on time and on budget but if it is misused or, worse, not used at all then you did not get the desired outcome. As project managers, we are responsible for the ouput. The debate rages on as to whether we should also be responsible for the outcome.
Excellent.. Output vs Outcome. As you rightly said, we are more focused on output. How can we our project criteria defined to measure outcome ? Saving Changes...
Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
Oct 24, 2019 5:31 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Priya -
That barely describes project delivery success as even that needs to consider quality and stakeholder satisfaction.
"Real" success needs to tie to the realization of business value which might only be evaluated months or years afterwards.
The Sydney Opera House is the standard example I use in classes when I speak of a project which vastly missed the mark based on evaluation against the Triple Constraint but is still considered a success based on the sustainable impact it has created.
Kiron
Thanks Kiron for your response. The Sydney opera house is an excellent example why iron triangle may not be the measure of success. Agile introduces the value triangle, do you think that is well suited to measure the success of a project ?
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1 reply by Kiron Bondale
Oct 25, 2019 6:25 AM
Kiron Bondale
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Even the value triangle doesn't explicitly call out stakeholder satisfaction so perhaps we need a value square :-)
Saving Changes...
Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
Oct 24, 2019 6:26 AM
Replying to Sergio Luis Conte
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The process success criteria must be defined before the project start. If you are in this point of the project life cicle and you have to ask this question then you are lost (hehehe).
:) Thanks Sergio for your inputs.
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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Oct 25, 2019 5:05 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
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You are welcome. Important thing is: take into account you have not define success related to product. You have to define success related to project and those are driven by the business objectives and goals project is created to achieve in the framework of scope, time, quality and cost because those are the items project manager can control. For example, "client satisfaction" is achieved thanks project quality. Sucess factors like "growth 5% in market share the current year" are not project success factors. You will not growth because the project. You will growth because the product created by the project (or the solution) and that is a product success factor. What the project will contribute to it is thanks scope (create the product with the features defined), time (create the product in the needed time frame) and quality (create the product as defined). All related to product definition is on hands of business analyst.
Saving Changes...
Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
Oct 24, 2019 12:21 PM
Replying to Chinyere Mbamalu
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If before the start of the project you asked the client or stakeholders what success means to them / how do they define success, I would say your project is a success if you accomplished what they told you success is to them.
Awesome Chinyere. We do a visioning exercise with our stakeholders to find the success criteria. Would love to know what other ways can we leveraged to uncover the success criteria. Saving Changes...
Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
Oct 24, 2019 10:56 AM
Replying to Jorge Escoto
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Priya: The world is more dynamic every day. The majority of PM disagree with me, and I am more aligned with Kiron. I will give you a few examples: A really big production facility was built on time, budget, quality. But it was closed a few years after being built. Payback had not been achieved. At the other side of the world, a smaller facility was built with all the indicators in red, but several years later is producing and earning money. So: Indicators are not the best way to measure a project's success. Keeping this as your measure is old fashioned. Your first project success measure is stakeholders' satisfaction. The second measure: time will tell.
Hi Jorge, Thank you for your response, I think here too we are speaking about output vs outcome. Please correct me if I am wrong Saving Changes...
Priya PatraDelivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services LtdMumbai, India
Oct 24, 2019 5:21 AM
Replying to krish Woo
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Complete the project before the scheduled time
Thanks Krish for your response. Saving Changes...
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
A measure of success is not meeting the triple constraints, it is only an indicator that everybody came to work on time to do what they were told.
As others have said, minimum acceptance criteria need to be agreed at the start of the project. Success is related to value but it is not always as simple as just that. It needs to deliver the right value to be successful. A simple example from the session I'll be doing on 23rd NOV during the virtual BA conference - I need a bigger house. Currently, I'm living in a 2 bedroom condo with my wife and 3 children. We have two cars and a dog. While a 6 bedroom mansion with a 5 car garage on an 8-acre plot would add undeniable value it would be the wrong kind of value. Few would question it if it was on the backlog but in reality, it is waste. Success? Uhm, not really. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Oct 25, 2019 12:29 AM
Replying to Priya Patra
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:) Thanks Sergio for your inputs.
You are welcome. Important thing is: take into account you have not define success related to product. You have to define success related to project and those are driven by the business objectives and goals project is created to achieve in the framework of scope, time, quality and cost because those are the items project manager can control. For example, "client satisfaction" is achieved thanks project quality. Sucess factors like "growth 5% in market share the current year" are not project success factors. You will not growth because the project. You will growth because the product created by the project (or the solution) and that is a product success factor. What the project will contribute to it is thanks scope (create the product with the features defined), time (create the product in the needed time frame) and quality (create the product as defined). All related to product definition is on hands of business analyst. Saving Changes...
Thanks Kiron for your response. The Sydney opera house is an excellent example why iron triangle may not be the measure of success. Agile introduces the value triangle, do you think that is well suited to measure the success of a project ?
Even the value triangle doesn't explicitly call out stakeholder satisfaction so perhaps we need a value square :-) Saving Changes...
