When is project a success ?

A project manager is just as responsible for managing client expectations and working with them to produce a product that both meets the original requirements "(to ensure the project produces what it was created to produce) and fitness for use (the product or service needs to satisfy the real needs)" (PMI, 2013 p.229). Who wants to work for months or years on a project to find out that in the end, it was useless to the customer?

A project manager is just as responsible for managing client expectations and working with them to produce a product that both meets the original requirements "(to ensure the project produces what it was created to produce) and fitness for use (the product or service needs to satisfy the real needs)" (PMI, 2013 p.229). Who wants to work for months or years on a project to find out that in the end, it was useless to the customer?

All we have to work from, Rick, is the "original requirements". If they no longer meet the "fitness for use", the product owner, not the project manager, has to revise the requirements.

I'm forgetting, what is the name of project management class in which requirements are reviewed intermittently? As far as I remember it is used in software development where with the passage of development of product, the requirements are reviewed.

Sergio, I think Elizabeth is making a valid argument. Validating useful outcome is often part of the pre-project activities, but can (in my experience) be part of the Project Manager’s task. It is true that not all companies have the same level of maturity in their processes (Hurdle rates or Decision Quality methods), but there is usually some method to determine the value of a project. Why are we doing this? What is the return in profit or increased efficiency? The “Useful outcome” is defined in the “Why” of the project.

Sergio, thanks for responding to my comment. I think the role of the project manager used to be exactly what you describe, and in many places that is still the case. However, I think the discipline of project management is changing and that the role of the PM is evolving into something else, which does see us getting involved more and more in the 'adding value' part of doing new work and not purely in the role of delivering what someone else has scoped. It will be interesting to see how far this goes and whether this is supported by the professional bodies over time. But without the ability to execute, project managers can add little if any value, so we need to be able to do both.