Did you know that up to 11% of agile projects fail outright?
Measuring project success is a crucial part of any business. Clear indicators for the success of a project allow you to make crucial changes and develop as you move forward.
But how exactly do you determine project success and failure? In this guide, we’ll explain 6 ways to evaluate a project and explain the implications for your business.
Read on to learn more about measuring the success of a project.
What Defines Project Success?
A successful project accomplishes its objectives on time and within budget. This metric continues to be the most widely used measure for many businesses.
When starting a project, it is critical to define success. A project can only succeed if the criteria are established from the beginning.
Establishing good measures of success can be challenging. Many organizations find it hard to conduct these kinds of evaluations due to a lack of budget. However, it’s almost always worth the investment – the majority of projects fail without clear standards for success.
1. Schedule Baseline
One simple metric for measuring success is whether or not the project came in on the original schedule.
Experienced project managers understand that the many variables associated with large projects can make this difficult. However, with the right monitoring and regular schedule updates, it is achievable.
At the end of each phase or stage of the project, you should take time to evaluate and review your schedule. This will allow you to relocate resources where appropriate and meet key milestones. Do this in conjunction with weekly assessments to stay on top of your timeline.
Visual timelines are another great way to track your schedule. Use an online template to track tasks and deadlines with graphs – if you notice slippage, address those areas first.
Check out this project management software for engineering to learn more.
2. Quality Assurance
When your project concludes, you should conduct an overall quality review. This should include an assessment of both your management processes and any deliverables or products.
When you set out project plans, you should implement a quality standard. Then, use regular quality reviews to ensure it’s met at every stage of the project. That way, you can correct any quality issues before they lead to bigger problems.
Project management software can help you track and uphold quality at every stage of the process. These programs allow you to assign tasks, share files, and break your quality assurance reviews down into manageable and actionable data.
Plus, with cloud-sharing capabilities, your team can stay connected in real-time. This makes the quality assurance process clear and accessible for all, wherever they are in the world.
3. Project Budget
Cost management is one of the most important factors when it comes to measuring project success.
You need to assess your project’s financial performance. Take the time to regularly compare your current operating costs to your project budget. Then, look for ways to explain any discrepancies. Project dashboards are a great way to track your spending in real time and make dynamic changes where necessary.
If you make changes, compare the new model to your original estimate. They should be similar enough for your management team to be confident that the project will meet targets. If your estimates increase significantly, your expenditure may be at risk of spiraling—something that needs to be identified and fixed as early as possible.
4. Stakeholder Feedback
Your stakeholders have a vested interest in the everyday success of your projects. Therefore, it’s a good idea to check in with them regularly. Make note of how they’re feeling about the progress of the project, and work to deliver on their feedback.
Stakeholder satisfaction can be difficult to measure with numbers or statistics. Rather, it can be taken as a general sentiment toward their faith in the project and its managers. Above all, your stakeholders want the project to be successful and profitable, so their feedback is invaluable.
If you want to, you could ask shareholders to complete a short satisfaction survey as part of your assessments. This data can then be coated into a matrix and used for future project points.
5. Performance to Business Case
You can measure project success by examining and reviewing the business case that was originally agreed upon. How is the project coming along? Make sure your targets are still attainable and that the issue that the initiative was intended to solve is still there.
Some projects make sense at the time, but upon completion, the environment has changed, making the initiative in question obsolete. This can happen if nobody checks the business case during the project.
Don’t waste your time building something that no one wants! Instead, regularly review and analyze the business case as it relates to your current business objectives.
Measuring Project Success: Everything You Need to Know
Overall, measuring project success comes down to a few main factors.
By regularly assessing your schedule baseline, budget, and quality standards, you can rest assured that your project is heading in the right direction. If it isn’t, you have the chance to make adjustments before it’s too late.
Speak with your shareholders and reference your business case routinely—this will help you track project success and learn lessons for the future. With this guide in hand, you have the best possible chance of measuring project success.
If you found this article helpful, be sure to check out the rest of our blog for more practical business advice.
