Project Management: Measures of Success

When I was taking my first Motorcycle Safety Foundation course, I defined success as passing the tests. That meant that I had to be able to control the motorcycle enough to get it through the course without too many errors. I’ve taken the same course two more times and each time my measure of success changed. I still wanted to pass the test. However, I wanted to pass the test confidently. I could measure the time, points, and missteps because they were objective, visible and very measurable. How do you measure confidence? I couldn’t tell you what the exact success measure was, but I knew when I reached the level of confidence for which I was looking.

Measuring the success or failure of a project can be a bit like measuring confidence. It is possible to identify when you’ve met your scope, time, budget and quality measures. The data for those measures are relatively easy to capture. The more difficult aspect of gathering the measures of success is gaining agreement on what the tolerance is associated with those measures. The exercise for determining tolerance may seem a bit like defining when confidence is achieved. How far off can the scope, time, budget and quality be on a project for it to still be successful? Is it truly 100% or nothing? That narrow a project is filled with risk, we must provide a tolerance for less than 100%, or we warp our behaviors. Perfection is always a goal, never an outcome.

Successful project delivery is determined based on the successful delivery of the business benefits. We must look past the simple delivery of a product or service. We must measure our success based on what the product or service we are creating will provide. If we stop short of the benefit, we have missed the reason for doing the project in the first place and the consequence can be project failure.

“The bike will go where you look” is a motorcycling lesson that is critical to remember to be a successful rider. I was riding, it was a beautiful day for a ride, and I went into a turn a little fast. I was concerned because I couldn’t see around the bend very well, and I was approaching the center line. The harder I tried to stay away from the center line, the closer I got. I was staring right at it when I remembered “the bike will go where you look”. I lifted my head, looked through the turn and successfully navigated the turn without touching the center line.

This same lesson is true in project management. The project will go where the project manager is looking. When we focus on where we are going, it causes the success measures to fall into place. The tolerances for budget, time, scope and quality become clear. We are able to lead the project successfully because we are clear about where we are heading and why we are heading there. We can communicate with the project team based on business value rather than project deadlines, the business benefits rather than 0 tolerance and project success based on reality rather than perfection.

Ride on, Manage On.