When do you consider a project failure and what are the early symptoms?
Amit KhuranaDirector| Clarificient Inc.Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
PMI pulse data mentions only 64% projects meet project goals. Who and how do you measure project success? Should you re-visit project goals based on the value? If yes, when is the ideal time?
Continuous and regularly. There is no clear defintion, when you want to review goals. It must based on your project size and scope of work. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
no clear point. It should be reviewed time to time against the opportunities. Saving Changes...
arlene trimbleAssistant IT Director| Local GovernmentAlamo, Ca, United States
You define early on how to measure success in your projects during the project initiation. This statement is normally included in your project charter under project goals or objectives which is essentially a SPAM (Specific, Pertinent, Attainable, and Measurable) language. This objective or goal would guide you in when and how to measure your success throughout the project as goals could be iterative in nature. Saving Changes...
Tom DierschRetiredBurnaby, British Columbia, Canada
More than achieving the goals, you need milestones along the way to let the sponsor know that the project is still consistent with the charter. It makes no sense to have goals that are only measured after the project is complete or when the project has been in operation for some time. So if your success criteria are all based on improvements to revenue or reductions in cost, it will be difficult to measure those mid project. In that case, I would argue for pilot type projects that have small time windows, modest sucess criteria and the ability to evaluate quickly. Other times, it would be reasonable to have interim sucess criteria (deliverables on the project) that would indicate the ongoing health of the work. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The first thing to be clear is what exactly means "project success" and how it will be measure. It is amazing to see inside project charters (where you can usually find the project success criteria) that stated project objectives are product objectives in fact. And it is amazing to see how the project objectives are not well stated using SMART charecteristic for example. So, to determine project failure is quit easy as it is quite easy to determine if the project will not achieve the project objectives as an implicit behavior during project control activities. The hard thing is to define the project objectives. As I mention, because most of the people do not understand what a project objective really is. Saving Changes...
Tom DierschRetiredBurnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Very good point Sergio. So the question is how often a PROJECT is cancelled (and perhaps considered a failure) when the PRODUCT goals are seen as unreachable or unattainable.
The PULSE premise is that too many projects are not well managed and therefore fail becuase of the inherent PM standards. But it also tries to create a connection between GNP and project sucess. "when projects fail, so do profits, because organizations are less likely to achieve strategic goals "
Clearly we can have many sucessful projects where the premise of the project is a product that does not have the potential to delivery the results expected.
So we must do the right projects correctly in order to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our companies. Saving Changes...
Amit KhuranaDirector| Clarificient Inc.Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
Thank you everyone for sharing yours thoughts. I really appreciate your time and effort. Saving Changes...
