How do you no when you have made a success at any given project. If you are like me who is constantly making improvements in the way I conduct my projects Saving Changes...
Kay BanhamProject Manager| Barking and Dagenham CollegeEssex, United Kingdom
Hi Matthew thanks for the reply
if every thing was as cut and dry I would agree with you. The point I was trying to make was the lack of appreciation received after you have completed the project Saving Changes...
You'd have to be more specific as to the situation your asking about. Project Success is defined by "on-time, under budget, and with all the functionality." It appears that you may be wanting to know "how do I get recognized for my success?"
Dave Saving Changes...
Kay BanhamProject Manager| Barking and Dagenham CollegeEssex, United Kingdom
Hi David thanks for your input. I am what they refer to as the accidental project manager coming from an IT background all 16 years. if it helps I also work for a college where IT is taken for granted. I work very hard at bringing all the elements together and to budget but you never seem to get thanks for it once the project is completed. As I stated in the first response I am constantly making changes to the way I deliver information to the team, I am learning how to use Project 2002 and I have had little training I use what works all I wanted to no was if you received little or no thanks how do you no that you have been successful it costs nothing to send an email or to say thanks brings with it a lot of self motivation as well I clearing want to contiue to make changes but I am unsure how successful i am
Kay, As a part of your project, do you run a Lessons Learned session at the end of each project? This is a guaranteed way to do the two things you're asking about: (1) get recognition from the sponsor (because they attend) and (2) discover did and didn't work for future improvement on the next project.
I think there are templates here that can help you with a Lessons Learned session. Saving Changes...
Ryan JumawanSoftware Project Engineer| Global ConsultingBoston, Ma, United States
Kay, you can also conduct a post mortem activity with your team to evaluate the performance of the project.. you can find out what needs to be improve in the future and you can also find out what are the issues that helped to the sucess of your project. These results can be submitted to to your sponsoring manager for their assesment why your project a successful one or failed. - Ryan Saving Changes...
One thing to consider is, if you have gates or key milestones, to develop an appropriate template for surveying the team on your performance and what they believe is the project track status.
This feedback is great to identify problems before thing get worse. Waiting until project closure is too late.
Key is getting people to respond is to make it easy, i.e., that they can answer it in less than two minutes.
Saving Changes...
Anonymous
One of my project managers planned and estimated and executed a feasibility/prototype project - in other words, his project was to actually only execute a segment of the work to prove wether or not we could use the technology successfully. If it showed success, the next step would have to been to continue to Phase 2 and actually implement a large project to use the technology and create an application. As it turned out, our prototyping proved unsuccessful - therefore the PM stopped the project. He said he was successful because he set out to do a prototype to wisely examine whether or not a full scale effort was feasible based on the results of his prototype project.
Problem is, there are folks who say this was an actual project failure as a significant amount of money was spent to prove this in the feasibility study/prototype project.
My question is: what is the criteria/guideline that says whether or not a feasibility study/prototype project is successful and is a good idea if afterwards, it helps you decide if continuing is a waste of money? Is there something that says if you spend 30% or your total estimated project budget on the feasibility study and can provie its a good idea or not, then its succesful. But spending more than 30% is a failure?
Any insight is much appreciated... Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Dear Anonymous, good post and replies. Regarding knowing when you have had project success, I agree with all of the excellent posts below. Regarding, that feeling of appreciation, I would offer that the feeling of appreciation that comes from others is of minor importance. But the feeling of appreciation that comes from within that only you know about fully - your project sucess, your continual improvement, etc. that is the real thing and something to be proud of, even if no one else knows, cares, or is willing to acknowledge. Cheers. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International Saving Changes...
Then derive from these factors and objectives entry and exit criteria for each subsequent phases. With these criteria you will be able to maintain the success factors and objectives at the end of the project (emphasis on sign-off here). And yes you often need to invest in a prototype and/or commercial pilot before you can judge whether it’s is economically sound to invest in a product. This (should) happen(s) a lot with stuff coming out of R&D (i.e. people with their heads in the clouds, it’s your responsibility to get them back on earth).
Be careful though, these exercises are actually no projects, often it is a 95% political job rather then a project management job.
