What Are Quantifiable Criteria That Must Be Met for the Project to Be Considered a Success?
I get asked about project success criteria a lot – in fact, it's one of the virtually searched terms on this site. So I idea information technology was nearly time that I pooled all my resource into 1 definitive guide to project success criteria.
In this article:
- How to define success criteria
- Why are project success criteria important?
- Two types of project success criteria
- 1. Criteria related to project direction
- 2. Criteria related to deliverables
- How to document your success criteria
- How to measure projection success criteria
- Baselining functioning
- When exercise I track success criteria?
- Project success criteria: the summary
- The next thing
Let's start with a definition of project success criteria.
How to define success criteria
Project success criteria are the standards by which the project will be judged at the finish to decide whether or not it has been successful in the eyes of the stakeholders.
OK, I'm glad nosotros got that sorted. Now allow's look at why we should care about project success criteria.
Why are project success criteria important?
Organizations don't define failure. Nosotros don't document how nosotros volition know if a project has failed – what failure looks like – because thinking well-nigh failing is not a good style to motivate the project squad when the work has only just started.
The absenteeism of a formal definition of failure makes it uncomfortably piece of cake for internal and external stakeholders to brand projects a failure.
Think well-nigh some of the projects that accept hit the headlines recently (in whatsoever state). Projects 'fail' in the eyes of the media and stakeholders because for people are left to guess what success looks similar.
Is it commitment on time? Is it delivery on budget? Peradventure those two things actually don't matter much to the stakeholders concerned if they get a great quality effect and happy customers, which is pretty much the theme of my volume, Customer-Centric Project Management.
Successful organizations take the guesswork out of this process: they define what success looks like, so they know when they have accomplished it. If you want project success, you have to define what success looks like for your projection.
Perhaps budget is the most important matter to your stakeholders, and quality is taking a back seat on the project. Perhaps customer satisfaction is essential, and yous don't care how many overtime hours the squad has to piece of work to go that finish result.
Project success criteria are a peachy tool to utilize with stakeholders to generate engagement.
(For more tools for your stakeholder management piece of work, grab this set up of stakeholder management templates — everything y'all need to organize and build successful working relationships with anybody on your squad.)
You tin can use them to define the project's goals and track progress – and if your stakeholders finish caring about your success criteria you've got an early on warning sign that y'all demand to do more to proceed to keep them on side.
Project success criteria are the standards by which the project will be judged at the end to decide whether or not it has been successful in the eyes of the stakeholders.
Whatever success looks like, you have to ascertain information technology so yous can ain it. There are ii types of success criteria that y'all'll need to define for your projection.
Two types of project success criteria
And so yous want to know how yous'll know if your project has been a success? Yous demand to identify what success looks like for you and your stakeholders. And the easiest way to practise this is to brainstorm with your squad.
During this procedure you lot'll probably come up up with success criteria related to the direction of the project. These are the success criteria which you can refer to in project audits or the mail service-projection review.
They aid focus your mind on the 'business' of project management and relate to doing the project correct. They aid y'all check that you're hitting all the correct targets and are applying project direction standards accordingly.
Examples would exist things similar:
- Hold a Project Board coming together once a month
- Complete project audits in line with the timetable published by the Projection Office
- Ensure all timesheets are completed by the deadlines
- Achieve 95% compliance on project quality reviews.
Solitary these success criteria are not sufficient. They help you lot measure whether you're doing a adept task but not whether you lot are actually delivering annihilation useful for your stakeholders.
Your success criteria analysis should besides identify deliverable-based project success criteria which are strongly linked to the business example and the rationale behind doing the project.
It'south difficult to give sensible examples as they are tied so tightly to what your project is delivering but you should aim for things like:
- Reach rollout of software to all users
- Train 95% of staff within the ii week training flow
- Improve customer satisfaction by 65% over the outset three months
- Gain Eye of Excellence accreditation for Marketing department.
You go the pic.
And so, to summarize:
- Project direction success criteria: Related to the professional task of running the project e.g. Produce and gain sign off for project initiation document
- Project deliverable success criteria: Related to things delivered as a result of the project e.g. Distribute 6,000 instructional leaflets to households in our target area.
How to document your success criteria
Certificate your project success criteria in a list. I include the listing in the Project Charter or Project Initiation Certificate so it's piece of cake to refer to.
Each listing item should include:
- Name of success criteria
- How information technology is going to be measured
- How often it is going to exist measured
- Who is responsible for measuring information technology
You tin likewise capture the output of the measurements hither if you want, or move that to another relevant project document. Personally I like to proceed them dissever, but I don't see why information technology wouldn't piece of work to have your records all in one place.
Documenting your success criteria also means that yous can get projection stakeholders to sign upwardly to them. Having them clearly recorded makes it easy to refer to them later on and there is no ambivalence about what you lot fix out to do.
Of course, yous can alter them later, add a few more or take some abroad if the project evolves. Things always modify on projects, so don't worry nearly it if that happens.
Just make sure you get agreement from anyone important before you go irresolute success criteria — retrieve, what's of import to y'all might non be the aforementioned as what's important to all your stakeholders!
How to measure project success criteria
You take two choices when it comes to measuring project success criteria:
- Detached: Aye/No
We did or did not practice something
Examples: Projection delivered on time, company gained XYZ accreditation, new branch opened - Continuous: measurable on a scale
We did something to a sure extent, inside a target range
Examples: Improve customer satisfaction scores to between 75 per cent and 100 per cent, increase revenue by 8-10 per cent, rebrand 15-20 offices within Quarter Four.
Continuous measurements ever include the possibility of being translated into discrete targets. If customer satisfaction was 75 per cent in May, and the target was 60 per cent, you reached the target. If it was 59 per cent, you didn't.
Monitoring benefits on a continuous scale is always better as it allows you lot to runway changes over a period of time. If the client satisfaction target was reached in May, that's fantastic. But you cannot tell from a yeah/no measurement if it was ameliorate or worse than April or what the trend into June is looking like.
Go for continuous measurements wherever you lot tin can. They requite y'all more flexibility and greater options for the future, in example you lot need them. Basically, the more data you have access to, the better your decision-making can be.
Baselining performance
It's cracking knowing how you are going to measure out success criteria going frontward, only how are you doing today?
If you want to capture trending information then you have to accept a baseline of electric current operation as before long as you tin can, preferably every bit soon as you lot have prepare the success criteria.
The problem is that at the start of a project at that place's normally so much going on that baselining current functioning takes a dorsum seat to doing improvements and delivering change.
Nonetheless, make time for it, or yous'll accept a harder job later working out whether your project has fabricated a difference. It's great knowing that y'all are now calling back customers within 20 minutes, merely if you lot don't know what the recollect fourth dimension was before projection was implemented yous may very well have made the state of affairs worse – yous only can't tell.
A performance baseline lets yous identify the differences in performance in the mail service-project world related to the things you consider important measures – your project success criteria.
Use the same calculations and tracking method to piece of work out your baseline performance as you intend to practise for measuring your success criteria later. Otherwise you lot are introducing even more than variables into the mix – keep it uncomplicated.
When do I rail success criteria?
You'll take an initial performance criterion as presently every bit you can in the project, as we saw above. Then you lot have to piece of work out how often you desire to measure out your project success criteria.
Each success criteria volition have unlike requirements. Some y'all can track once a month, others y'all'll only measure once again. Some y'all won't track very oftentimes and then as soon as you hit delivery you might be measuring them daily (like daily quality targets or call handling times).
For assistance on what you should be reporting regularly, my online preparation course near how to write Better Project Status Reports will guide you.
Projection management-related success criteria do not need to be tracked over time and then y'all do not demand to generate a baseline of current performance. In one case the project or job is over you should be able to say with certainty whether or not, and to what extent, you lot met the criteria.
Did you hold those Project Lath meetings monthly? I hope so. Just if you didn't, the project is over and, honestly, no one cares anymore.
The true business benefits, on the other paw, hopefully concluding for a lot longer. Even a i-off project like changing all the role light bulbs to energy efficient ones has durable benefits. The success criteria could be: 'maintain electricity savings at 40 per cent of previous expenditure for 3 years.'
The measurement of these over time should be handed to the operations team as part of the projection handover when the project closes. Yous should not continue the responsibleness for tracking success criteria (i.e. project benefits) over time.
While the project is running, written report on your progress so yous gloat the successes as you lot go. And if at that place aren't successes to gloat, and so yous can adapt your projection approach so that you do hit your success criteria.
Project success criteria: the summary
To summarize:
- You must define what success looks like for your project or you won't know if you take accomplished it.
- Success criteria measure what's important to your stakeholders.
- Document success criteria and get anybody to agree to them.
- Use continuous measurements where possible.
- Baseline today'southward performance so y'all know where you are starting from.
- Rails as appropriate and report on your progress.
The next thing
In one case you've got the success criteria worked out, y'all've got a crucial piece of the puzzle for your stakeholders.
The next matter to consider is how to engage stakeholders throughout the life of the project. Y'all'll be keeping them informed nigh progress and you'll need to create a communication plan to ensure everyone gets the information they require throughout.
Pivot for afterward reading:
Source: https://rebelsguidetopm.com/the-definitive-guide-to-project-success-criteria/
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