farshid adaviProject Manager and Strategic Planner| CivilHouse
At first, the answer seems obvious: no.
But consider this.
A building project is delivered on time and within budget. To reduce upfront costs, the team eliminates some energy-efficiency measures, selects lower-cost systems, and postpones investments in long-term resilience.
At handover, everyone is satisfied.
According to traditional project metrics, the project is a success.
Yet a few years later, the building faces higher operating costs, expensive upgrades, lower adaptability, and growing pressure to meet new sustainability requirements.
So what exactly was successful?
The outcome?
Or the decisions that produced it?
Perhaps one of the limitations of our project success frameworks is that they measure results more rigorously than they measure decision quality.
A project can sometimes achieve good outcomes despite poor decisions.
Likewise, good decisions made under uncertainty may not always lead to good outcomes.
This raises an interesting question:
Should project success be evaluated only by outcomes, or should decision quality become part of the conversation?
I'd love to hear your experience:
▪ Have you ever seen a project that looked successful at delivery but created problems later?
▪ Have you ever made a decision that was unpopular at the time but proved valuable years later?
▪ How do you evaluate decision quality in your projects?
farshid adaviProject Manager and Strategic Planner| CivilHouse
Jun 24, 2026 10:25 AM
Replying to Aaron Porter
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"Perhaps the next challenge is moving from whether decision quality matters to how we can evaluate it in a meaningful and practical way."
That could be tough. How much information is enough information to make a good decision? How long should it take? Who determines how much information is enough and how much uncertainty is acceptable? How do you measure the uncertainty? If you measure quality of the decision based on the outcomes of the decision, how do you quantify the level of luck that was involved? If you can define the levels of uncertainty and luck involved, can you repeat it in the future with the same results?
I'll just say that I'm glad it's not my job to figure that out.
Thank you again, Aaron. I really appreciate you taking the discussion a step further. I don't think the goal is to eliminate uncertainty or create a perfect formula for decision quality—that's probably impossible. Rather, it may be about asking whether, given the information, constraints, and uncertainty that existed at the time, the decision followed a transparent, evidence-informed, and well-governed process. Perhaps decision quality is less about predicting the future perfectly and more about demonstrating that the decision was made responsibly, with explicit assumptions, clear trade-offs, and conscious consideration of risk. Outcomes will always contain an element of luck, but the quality of the reasoning behind a decision is something organizations can learn from and continuously improve. Saving Changes...
I completely agree that project success and decision quality are not always the same thing. I've seen projects that were celebrated at delivery because they met schedule and budget targets, only to create significant operational challenges later. In many cases, short-term optimization came at the expense of long-term value, maintainability, or sustainability. One lesson I've learned is that outcomes can be influenced by factors beyond the team's control, while decision quality reflects the information, assumptions, risks, and trade-offs considered at the time the decision was made. For that reason, I believe project success should be evaluated on two dimensions: • Delivery performance (scope, schedule, budget, quality) • Decision effectiveness (risk awareness, stakeholder alignment, long-term value creation, and adaptability) The most valuable project decisions are often the ones that don't show immediate benefits but prevent future costs, disruptions, or missed opportunities. A project delivered successfully is important. A project that continues to create value years after delivery is even better.
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1 reply by farshid adavi
Jun 25, 2026 4:05 AM
farshid adavi
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Thank you, Saleha, for such a thoughtful contribution. I really like your distinction between delivery performance and decision effectiveness. I don't see them as competing dimensions, but as complementary ones. A project may demonstrate excellent delivery performance while still revealing weaknesses in the decisions that shape its long-term value. Your point about value creation after delivery also resonates strongly with me. Perhaps one of the future directions for project success is to recognize that delivering a project is not the end of the story—it is only one milestone in evaluating whether the decisions made throughout the project continue to create value, resilience, and adaptability over time.
Saving Changes...
farshid adaviProject Manager and Strategic Planner| CivilHouse
Jun 25, 2026 3:57 AM
Replying to Saleha Mubeen
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I completely agree that project success and decision quality are not always the same thing. I've seen projects that were celebrated at delivery because they met schedule and budget targets, only to create significant operational challenges later. In many cases, short-term optimization came at the expense of long-term value, maintainability, or sustainability. One lesson I've learned is that outcomes can be influenced by factors beyond the team's control, while decision quality reflects the information, assumptions, risks, and trade-offs considered at the time the decision was made. For that reason, I believe project success should be evaluated on two dimensions: • Delivery performance (scope, schedule, budget, quality) • Decision effectiveness (risk awareness, stakeholder alignment, long-term value creation, and adaptability) The most valuable project decisions are often the ones that don't show immediate benefits but prevent future costs, disruptions, or missed opportunities. A project delivered successfully is important. A project that continues to create value years after delivery is even better.
Thank you, Saleha, for such a thoughtful contribution. I really like your distinction between delivery performance and decision effectiveness. I don't see them as competing dimensions, but as complementary ones. A project may demonstrate excellent delivery performance while still revealing weaknesses in the decisions that shape its long-term value. Your point about value creation after delivery also resonates strongly with me. Perhaps one of the future directions for project success is to recognize that delivering a project is not the end of the story—it is only one milestone in evaluating whether the decisions made throughout the project continue to create value, resilience, and adaptability over time. Saving Changes...
The 2008 financial crisis is a perfect example; banks hit every short-term metric while systematically ignoring long-term risk quality. Outcomes and decisions can look very different depending on which clock you're measuring.
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1 reply by farshid adavi
Jun 25, 2026 11:27 AM
farshid adavi
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Thank you, Syed. That's a powerful example. I think your point about "which clock we're measuring" is especially important. The time horizon we choose can fundamentally change how we judge both project success and decision quality. Perhaps one of the limitations of many project evaluations is that they end at handover, while the real consequences of key decisions often emerge years later. Looking beyond delivery may help us better understand not only what a project achieved, but whether its decisions created lasting value.
Saving Changes...
farshid adaviProject Manager and Strategic Planner| CivilHouse
Jun 25, 2026 5:24 AM
Replying to Syed Ashir Riaz
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The 2008 financial crisis is a perfect example; banks hit every short-term metric while systematically ignoring long-term risk quality. Outcomes and decisions can look very different depending on which clock you're measuring.
Thank you, Syed. That's a powerful example. I think your point about "which clock we're measuring" is especially important. The time horizon we choose can fundamentally change how we judge both project success and decision quality. Perhaps one of the limitations of many project evaluations is that they end at handover, while the real consequences of key decisions often emerge years later. Looking beyond delivery may help us better understand not only what a project achieved, but whether its decisions created lasting value. Saving Changes...
Yes, but I would call it the exception rather than the rule. Strong teams, timely course corrections can sometimes offset poor decisions. In the long run, though, sustainable project success depends on informed decision-making and continuous adaptation.
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1 reply by farshid adavi
Jun 28, 2026 1:41 AM
farshid adavi
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Thank you, Vitor. I like your distinction between the exception and the rule. I also agree that strong teams and timely course corrections can sometimes recover from poor decisions. But perhaps that raises another interesting question: are we measuring the quality of the original decision, or the capability of the team to adapt and recover? In many successful projects, both matter. Yet for long-term value creation, improving the quality of decisions may ultimately reduce the need for costly corrections later.
Saving Changes...
farshid adaviProject Manager and Strategic Planner| CivilHouse
Jun 27, 2026 6:28 PM
Replying to Vitor Tolomelli
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Yes, but I would call it the exception rather than the rule. Strong teams, timely course corrections can sometimes offset poor decisions. In the long run, though, sustainable project success depends on informed decision-making and continuous adaptation.
Thank you, Vitor. I like your distinction between the exception and the rule. I also agree that strong teams and timely course corrections can sometimes recover from poor decisions. But perhaps that raises another interesting question: are we measuring the quality of the original decision, or the capability of the team to adapt and recover? In many successful projects, both matter. Yet for long-term value creation, improving the quality of decisions may ultimately reduce the need for costly corrections later. Saving Changes...
Well said. I'd also argue that the two are closely connected. A team's ability to adapt is essential, but consistently making sound decisions from the start reduces risk, minimizes rework, and preserves resources. Saving Changes...
Absolutely, and this happens more often than we like to admit. Projects can succeed despite bad decisions for several reasons, and understanding why is crucial for honest retrospectives.
First, survivorship bias plays a huge role. We celebrate the outcome and retroactively justify the decisions that led there, even when those decisions were objectively poor at the time they were made. A project that shipped on time despite a terrible architecture choice succeeded not because of that choice but in spite of it.
Second, compensating factors often mask bad decisions. A brilliant team can overcome poor planning. A favorable market can rescue a flawed product strategy. Generous budgets can absorb the waste created by bad resource allocation. The project succeeds, but the hidden cost of those bad decisions never gets measured.
Third, sometimes what looks like a bad decision in the moment turns out to be accidentally right due to changing circumstances. Cutting a feature that seemed critical might look like a bad call until market conditions shift and that feature becomes irrelevant.
The danger is when organizations learn the wrong lessons from these accidental successes. If a project succeeds despite skipping risk management, the conclusion should not be that risk management is unnecessary. This is why rigorous lessons learned processes matter. We need to evaluate decisions based on the information available at the time they were made, not just on the eventual outcome. Saving Changes...
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