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...
I think Stanislaw is correct. Success is viewed through many and different lenses/ stakeholders. Also, not all projects are business orientated. For example, how would you define success for a military ship project? The PM has his/her triple constraints, but will the customer (Navy) be satisfied with the deliverable? How do you quantify "satisfied" or success? The context is bigger though. The ship wasn't just built for the Navy. The ship combined with other projects, initiatives, etc. is part of a bigger picture. The ship/ Navy serves a higher purpose. What is the benefit of the Navy? How do you quantify the benefits of the Navy? How do you measure "success" of the Navy? Food for thought. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Whit all my due respect for all the valuable comments I fully disagree about some of them related customer satisfaction. Customer satisfactions is addressed thanks project quality. In fact, is the basement on quality. The problem is most of the people is unsatisfied because the product and the product is not a project mangement responsability, is a business analyst responsability. What the project manager can do is contribute to it creating the product as defined which is the basement of quality.
...
2 replies by Kiron Bondale and Thomas Walenta
Oct 25, 2019 10:50 AM
Kiron Bondale
...
Sergio -
sorry to disagree with you, but customer satisfaction is more than just meeting quality requirements. How you interacted and engaged with the customer and other stakeholders is as much a contributor to satisfaction as delivering to the requirements.
Kiron
May 31, 2020 7:40 AM
Thomas Walenta
...
Sergio,
different perspectives, seems to be a bit cyclical though.
If customer satisfaction is achieved by reaching quality goals, what are quality goals in the end? Customer satisfaction.
We do the whole exercise not to create a good product but to create value for stakeholders.
I read something interesting, a couple of weeks ago, that made a lot of sense to me. The iron triangle/triple constraint is not a measure of success at the end of a project; it is a measure of what is valued at the beginning.
I am of two minds on the topic of project success.
1) Was the product or service delivered without critical defects or gaps in scope, and was it accepted by the customer? Early in my career, I worked for a company that considered it a success when a project was finished.
2) As part of what was delivered, was there a plan that included post go-live metrics for measuring the expected value/ROI, milestones for when to realize value, and an owner? I can't think of a project I've worked on that realized 100% of the expected value the day we went live. It doesn't make sense to hold a project, or project manager, accountable for what happens months to years after a project goes live, but accountability demands that the project manager should make sure a plan is in place in order to say the product of a project is ready to hand off to the business. NOTE: this may not apply to every type of project, but it does seem to fit most of the IT and business projects I've worked on in my career.
Steve Ratkaj's Navy analogy complements what I was trying to say. You can build the ship to spec with no flaws and say the project was a success. The success of the ship is going to depend on several factors, some of which are the competence of the crew and the competence and number of enemies they face. It may be a year before anyone realizes they needed a battleship instead of a destroyer.
BAs and PMs have some accountability for what is delivered, but who decided it was a good idea in the first place? Does the PM define the business risks associated with the project? Is the PM responsible for plans to address market forces over the useful life of what was delivered? Does the PM get recognized and rewarded for business successes that aren't realized until 6 months after a project is complete?
Time to switch metaphors. Do you hold Craftsman responsible for whether or not you can drive a nail? If you can drive a nail, and you get paid for building something, does Craftsman deserve any of that money? Saving Changes...
Whit all my due respect for all the valuable comments I fully disagree about some of them related customer satisfaction. Customer satisfactions is addressed thanks project quality. In fact, is the basement on quality. The problem is most of the people is unsatisfied because the product and the product is not a project mangement responsability, is a business analyst responsability. What the project manager can do is contribute to it creating the product as defined which is the basement of quality.
Sergio -
sorry to disagree with you, but customer satisfaction is more than just meeting quality requirements. How you interacted and engaged with the customer and other stakeholders is as much a contributor to satisfaction as delivering to the requirements.
Kiron
...
1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Oct 25, 2019 11:09 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
...
No problem. First of all, to define quality you have to define your customer. With that on hand then you define project quality. It is impossble to define quality without having customer/client defined first. Inside project quality you will find all related to run the process. What you state belongs to project stakeholder management process. then is inside project quality.
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Oct 25, 2019 10:50 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
...
Sergio -
sorry to disagree with you, but customer satisfaction is more than just meeting quality requirements. How you interacted and engaged with the customer and other stakeholders is as much a contributor to satisfaction as delivering to the requirements.
Kiron
No problem. First of all, to define quality you have to define your customer. With that on hand then you define project quality. It is impossble to define quality without having customer/client defined first. Inside project quality you will find all related to run the process. What you state belongs to project stakeholder management process. then is inside project quality. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Priya
Interesting your question
Thank you for doing it.
Traditionally project management time, cost, scope and quality indicators are the most important factors in defining the success of a project.
More recently, practitioners have determined that the success of a project should also be measured by considering the achievement of its objectives.
Stakeholders may have different ideas about what they consider to be a successful project completion and what are the most important factors.
It is essential to clearly document project objectives and to select objectives that are measurable.
Questions to ask interested parties:
- What do you consider success in this project?
- How will success be measured?
- What factors can affect success?
You need to document the answers to these questions.
Success may include additional criteria tied to organizational strategy and delivering business results.
These objectives may include:
- Complete project benefit management plan
- Meet the financial benefits agreed upon in the business case:
* Net present value
* Return on Investment
* Internal Rate of Return
* Refund Period
* Value for money
* Achieve non-financial business case objectives
* Comply with contract terms and conditions
* Be aligned with organizational strategies, goals and objectives
* Achieve stakeholder satisfaction
* Adoption acceptable to customer / end user
* Integration of deliverables in the operating environment of the organization.
* Achieve the agreed quality of deliveries
* Meet other agreed success criteria (productivity) Saving Changes...
We can say a project is successful when both factors- Internal and External are fulfilled.
External is when the project objectives have been met from strategic perspective. This is where stakeholder satisfaction plays an important role.
Internal is when the project has met the margin (profit) as planned at the Bid stage- from financial management perspective, unless this is a non-profit project executed.
What use is a business project executed to client satisfaction but with huge cost overrun and depletion in margin. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Success like value is in the eye of the beholder, and exactly at the time when the PM claims success, not at some distant time before that. Things change over time, and that is whole idea about agile to find out what is needed and change it if experiments tell you so.
In this context, fixing requirements and success criteria at the beginning is quite waterfallish.
As for those famous examples like Sydney opera or Hamburg philharmony - they were disasters as projects and successes as programs. Regularly project managers are fired in these cases, so at least for them it was not successful.
Strategies to be successful are manyfold: - bring in new stakeholders (at best with funds) - change perspectives - forget about upfront success criteria, as those are merely trying to minimize the risk (for the project manager) and are defensive and divisive in nature, instead focus on delivering benefits as you go along - run more initiatives as programs, take charge of benefits and stakeholders and governance - make sure the projects within your program run clear cut to the cost/schedule/scope triangle Saving Changes...
Compliance to all constraint and ensuring the project meets the exit/success criteria as indicated in the project charter. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Oct 25, 2019 9:31 AM
Replying to Sergio Luis Conte
...
Whit all my due respect for all the valuable comments I fully disagree about some of them related customer satisfaction. Customer satisfactions is addressed thanks project quality. In fact, is the basement on quality. The problem is most of the people is unsatisfied because the product and the product is not a project mangement responsability, is a business analyst responsability. What the project manager can do is contribute to it creating the product as defined which is the basement of quality.
Sergio,
different perspectives, seems to be a bit cyclical though.
If customer satisfaction is achieved by reaching quality goals, what are quality goals in the end? Customer satisfaction.
We do the whole exercise not to create a good product but to create value for stakeholders.
...
1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
May 31, 2020 9:03 AM
Sergio Luis Conte
...
The problem here is the definition of "value". At that is inside the quality theory. it is critical to understand the theory about quality if not it has no sense to discusse about some terms. First of all we are talking about project quality, not product quality. Project quality is defined from product quality and product quality definition is outside the project manager scope of work. Quality goal is not customer satisfaction. Projects contributes to customer satisfaction thanks to achieve project quality attributes on product and process.
Community Champion
