When is a project considered a ‘success’?

At first, this may seem a surprising question, but there are four different standards of project success, there are three different, yet equally valid, inter-related sets of success measures which all need to be identified, tracked and measured.

Many organizations have progressively reduced their standards for success to, almost, “Whatever we can implement.” This is just not good enough. We wouldn’t accept poor standards of success in our private lives, so why at work?

For example, if your builder built you a three-bedroom house when you specified a four-bedroom house, however well it was built and delivered, you wouldn’t consider it to be a ‘success’.
Understanding Project Success takes this often overlooked subject and dissects it into its component parts so people can easily see why so many projects are deemed ‘unsuccessful’ on one or more dimensions and what needs to be put in place to ensure full success in the future.

This Understanding Project Success Guide is essential background for all parties involved in projects and project delivery.

As an organization, you need to agree what ‘success’ is, and what you’re going to measure projects by. Currently, everyone can have a different set of measures, most of which are unknown to the project team!

Who should read

This Guide is designed to be used by

1. Boards and Executives — to agree their organization’s success standards
2. PMOs — to establish and track the project and portfolio success measures
3. Governance teams (Sponsor/Steering Committee) — to enable them to understand the dimensions of ‘success’
4. Project practitioners — to ensure they are aware of all of the different sets of success measures that they will be measured against
5. Auditors — to measure the portfolio’s success.

Contents

The “Understanding Project Success” Guide covers the following topics

1. Understanding why there are different measures of project success
2. Understanding why we do projects
3. Understanding standards of project ‘success’
4. Understanding the value of success
5. Understanding the input and output measures of success
6. Understanding the three types of (input) project success measures
7. Understanding the business verus project (output) measures of success
8. Understanding the ‘value gap’
9. Understanding accountabilities for project ‘success’
10. Understanding accountabilities for business success
11. The end-to-end project success definition and measurement process
12. Example project measures of success
13. How to put the Project Success Definition and Measurement Process into practice.

Each topic refers to further sources of information where you can access more in-depth knowledge or take action using the relevant “How to …” tools and Guides.
 

Bonus

When you purchase this “Understanding …” Guide, you’ll also obtain access to

How to Identify the Governance and Business Measures of Success
Governance and Business measures of success can be identified at a Steering Committee meeting. This workshop guide takes you through the process of harnessing the support of the Steering Committee in specifying the two sets of measures that need to be taken into account by the project team.