For every project there are decisions, events, situations or conditions (factors) that need to exist or go right (are critical) for your project to succeed. These can be internal or external. They are not risks to the success of the project so much as preconditions to its success.

So, if you don’t identify and manage your project’s Critical Success Factors — they can destroy your project’s value and, occasionally, the project itself!

Our definition of critical success factors (CSFs) in this context is “Factors that need to exist or go right that are critical to the success of the project BUT are outside the control of the project manager and his or her team.”

CSFs are the accountability of the Governance Team (Sponsor and Steering Committee) to manage. So they need to have

1. KNOWLEDGE of what CSFs are and how they are different to risks
2. TOOLS to identify, ‘process’ and manage CSFs
3. SUPPORT to run identification workshops and deal with the unexpected.

CSFs can include — project funding, resourcing, senior management support, business capacity, economic conditions, interest rates, regulatory changes (or non-changes), and so on.

Some CSFs can be managed but others can only be monitored. But ALL CSFs need to be known, assigned and tracked.

Most projects have about a dozen CSFs.

When CSFs are ignored, mostly through ignorance rather than intent, the project can stumble when a CSF is breached, can lose value quickly where a critical success factor is missing and, in the worst cases, can become unviable or irrelevant. Managing CSFs is important, indeed critical!

Because CSFs are the accountability of the governance team they are too often ignored, not least as there is no easy, available process to enable their effective management. This is now available as part of the VDM difference.

First you have to find them — so I’ve provided you with a workshop slide pack to Understand and identify your CSFs (and a podcast to explain how to use this pack),

This pack takes you through

1. a three-part explanation of what CSFs are and are not and their context.
2. the CSF-identification exercise
3. the subsequent CSF accountability assignment.

Then you need to manage them — so we’ve provided you with a “How to manage critical success factors” Guide that takes you step-by-step through the end-to-end CSF management process.

Who should read

This Guide includes the roles of

1. the governance team
2. the project team, and
3. the PMO

so everyone knows what to do and the end-to-end context.

Contents

1. Understanding critical success factors
2. The end-to-end critical success factors management process
3. How to identify your critical success factors
4. How to manage critical success factors
5. How to assess and plan your CSFs
6. Example CSF management strategy
7. Example CSF management plan
8. How to take action on CSFs
9. How to report on CSFs

This Guide is supported by comprehensive Critical Success Factors Identification Workshop support materials.

Bonus

Understand and Identify your CSFs
A set of workshop slides with an accompanying podcast that details how to run a CSF identification workshop with the project’s governance team. This workshop allows you to identify the CSFs that are then managed through the Guide’s CSF management process.

Worthwhile projects
A value delivery management article by Jed Simms that describes the essential characteristics of successful workshops