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?
