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Understanding project success

The most common measures of project success - on time/on budget - are deficient. Indeed, many organization’s project measurement processes penalize attempts at success.

This Guide provides a thorough discussion of what is (and isn’t) ‘success’ across three dimensions - all of which have to be met for the project to be considered a total success. Yet, too often, only one is used.

Agreement as to the true measures of project success can have a major impact on your future project results.
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On time/on budget’ has for too long been the main measure of success - it is inappropriate, inadequate and not a measure of success at all! It is a measure of project delivery efficiency.

Project success needs to be measured at the

  • project level
  • business level
  • governance level

All three sets of success measures are equally applicable and failure on any one will diminish the value of the project. 

This Understanding Guide is an essential background for all parties involved in project and portfolio delivery. It refocuses the various non-conscious definitions of project success onto a single business-based definition of true success with significant ramifications.

The time when poor standards of project success will be tolerated is at an end. This Guide allows you to quickly raise the standard of success and make it clear to all what will and will not be tolerated. 

This step alone will often make a huge increase in value delivered and a huge reduction in the value of funds wasted on failing projects.

Understanding Project Success

  1. Understanding why there are different measures of project success
  2. Understanding why we do projects
  3. Understand 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 versus 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
  • Project Investment Committees/Boards - to establish and agree the organization’s success standards
  • PPMOs - to establish and track the project and portfolio success measures
  • Governance teams - to enable them to understand and govern to the true measures of success
  • Project practitioners - to ensure they are aware of all of the different sets of success measures  that they will be measured against
  • Auditors - to measure the projects’ and portfolio’s success
  • Establishes a common, business value based measure of success
  • Ensures all types of success measure are known and managed to
  • Transfers the focus from project-only measures to business measures
  • Redefines ‘failure’ as not meeting the success measures

Coming soon