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When is a project a “success”?

The answer to this question will vary based on to whom this questions is address. A project manager will usually say a project has been successful if it the project has been completed within the agreed upon scope, time and cost and of course has delivered the required quality. Some might say a project is a success if the client is satisfied at the end of the project.

Consider a scenario in which though the project met the scope, time and cost criteria but the underlying software architecture and design wasn't up to the mark, so when the product needs to be enhanced or goes in for maintenance there are a lot of issues. Would you call this project a success?

So you see the project might not be a success on all counts and there are different perspectives to defining project success.

How do we define Project Success?

The definition of success will vary from project to project.  To arrive at criterions for defining success for a project we first need to do “ Stakeholder Analysis ”. The major stakeholders and their perspectives which need to be covered for most of the projects are

• Business : Business Need that the project will fulfill.
• Project: Scope the project will deliver within the agreed upon time, cost and quality parameters.
• Individual / Group: Perspectives of people directly or indirectly connected or affected by the project. For example Community at large, End users etc.

You need to take multiple perspectives into account and arrive at a consensus in defining the “ Success Criteria ”, also known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or Key Success Indicators (KSIs) .

Success criteria should

• Be based on the perspectives which are important for the success of the project.
• Should be simple, attainable and measurable.
• Should be defined right at the time of project initiation.
• Be ranked according to priority.
• Should be preferably stable for the duration of the project.

Basically, list the items which are important for the success of your project and the way they would be measured.

Priority is important because in spite of the best intentions projects do tend to run into problems and choices have to be made and trade off taken. For example, if your success criterion gives priority to the quality of deliverables over timeliness, you can react accordingly and spend more time on achieving the required quality even though it might be at the cost of delay in delivery.

Some examples of Project Success Criteria and the Perspective they cater to ……

• Achieving “so-and-so” accreditation. Business
• Customer Satisfaction Index should be at least x%. Business
• Project overtime shall not exceed estimations by more than x%. Project
• At least x% of the code is re usable. Project
• The average installation time of the product should be less than X minutes. Project
• Form entry should not take more than x minutes. Individual / Group

Success is the obvious goal of every project and hence it should not be an unspoken goal. It should be defined at the start of the project in consultation with all project stakeholders. If you take the time to consider success from multiple perspectives, you will make future project successes more likely and easier to attain. Even then meeting the success criteria does not necessarily mean satisfaction of all stakeholders or “customer delight”. All it means is that the criterion's identified for considered stakeholders has been achieved and the project is a success on those criteria's.