I am looking for ways to track if a project was successful. I am also looking for lessons learnt and data which I could record on each project to ascertain if it was a success.
Do you have any suggestions?? Saving Changes...
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Scott TheusSenior Project Manager and Agilist| BWX TechnologiesEuclid, Oh, United States
Hi Peter,
That depends on how you define "Success." As project managers, we look at the variances between estimates and actuals to measure our "say:do" ratio; the smaller the variance the more successful the project.
Or, we could look at how accurate the scope statement was compared to what was actually delivered: Were there a lot of change requests? How did those requests impact the project?
Quality is also a measure of success: How many bugs were there? How many were caught in QA and fixed before the release vs how many were discovered by the customer in UAT and/or after the release went to production?
To me a successful project is one where the customer is happy. I like to ask "on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you with how this project was managed? and "on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you with the product that was delivered?" Most importantly, I want to know " on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely does this product meet your needs and expectations?"
I could run a project that is delivered exactly on time and exactly on budget with exactly the scope that the customer requested. But, if the customer is not happy with how the project was run, does not like the product that was delivered, or worst of all, the product does not meet the needs and expectations of the customer then the project is a total and complete failure.
-Scott Saving Changes...
Alexandre CostaScrum Master| Integer Consulting - Pictet technologiesLoures, Portugal
Dear Peter,
The success criteria of a project depends of what is established in the project charter and in the project plan and as you can imagine depends of the project, of the organization and of purpose.
The project produce an output (product, result, what ever) from there you achieve or not the desired outcomes and the expected benefits.
The project success criteria refer to measurable terms of what should be the outcome of the project that is acceptable to the end user, customer, and the stakeholders. In other words, the project success factors consist of activities or elements that are required to ensure successful completion of the project.
The Success criteria should be document and detailed avoiding vague and general terms in the project plan including:
The success criteria
How it will be measured
How often it will be measured
Who will be responsible for measuring the criteria
The three key factors that can define project success include the following:
The Iron Triangle (Cost + Scope + Time)
Realized Benefits
Stakeholder satisfaction.
Gents, Many thanks for the response.
I like the idea of trying to assign a score 1 to 10 about how successful the client thinks the project was against the iron triangle.
The number of change requests are not necessarily a good guide as it depends on the reason for those requests. I have seen them used as a way by the client to slowly release funds from their budget. Saving Changes...
Cost and schedule are the easy ones to define measures of success. Scope and quality can be more difficult and dependent on the project.
At the beginning of the project, there should be some determination of what differentiates good from bad. The expected benefits could be internal, such as we used it to develop internal skills and grow our business, and external such as customer satisfaction.
You can rate the project on a variety of factors. It becomes more challenging if you try to combine them into a single score because it becomes and apples-to-oranges comparison. You can take a full semester graduate level course dedicated to that very subject. Saving Changes...
In general, I'd subordinate all else to "key stakeholder satisfaction". I have witnessed quite a few projects which were on time, on budget, on scope, and were considered failures vs. many others which had one or negative variances at completion from their baselines only to be considered stellar successes.
The question "What would success look like?" is a critical one to be asked and answered early in the life of a project.
Success can be viewed from many different points. If you think of the Sydney Opera, it was a failure in terms of project management, but a huge success for Sydney has an icon.
From the owner's point of view, it is often the expected benefit vs real benefits. Saving Changes...
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
Seems like we have some opinions about what success is. I agree that you need to define your success first (what were the objective/s) and once you know this your true north metric should always be value. Does my project add value that contributes to my project objectives. Saving Changes...
Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Peter Interesting your question Thanks for sharing
One of the most common challenges in project management is determining whether or not a project is successful
More recently, professionals determined that the success of a project must also be measured considering the achievement of its objectives. Stakeholders may have different ideas about what they consider to be a successful completion of the project and what are the most important factors It is essential to clearly document the objectives of the project and select objectives that are measurable. Questions to ask stakeholders: - What do you consider success in this project? - How will success be measured? - What factors can affect success? It is necessary to document the answers to these questions
Success may include additional criteria linked to organizational strategy and delivering business results
It is possible that a project will be successful from the point of view of Scope, Time, Cost, Quality and unsuccessful from the point of view of business Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
Depends on what the success criteria of the project are? What was the intent and goal of the project. Was that met? These KPI's or OKR's should be determined at the onset. Saving Changes...
