What is a Successful Project?

People often do not understand the difference between delivering a successful project and project management success.

But there is a real difference as I will try to explain.

The essential measure of a successful project is that it delivered a successful outcome to the business. This is largely the responsibility of the project sponsor.

Project Management success on the other hand is delivering a project to the agreed Scope, Time, Cost and Quality, while maintaining a customer relationship and not burning out the project team.  this is largely the responsibility of the project manager.

So what are the different measures of project management success?

•    The project must have been delivered to the agreed Scope, Time, Cost and Quality.
•    The customer must be happy with the way the project management was carried out which means that the communications in particular, and the various other aspects of the project management, must have been performed professionally.
•    Another aspect of successful project management which is almost totally over-looked is the morale and health of the project team.  Project managers who burn-out team resources are not managing corporate resources effectively and the long-term cost to the organisation is usually totally understated.
•    Finally there is the overall quality of the Project Management. Here we are measuring how well the project manager managed the full suite of project management competencies including management of planning, communications, risks / issues, team and vendor.

The Post Implementation Review (PIR) is a useful tool for measuring and reporting the project management success against the stated measures.  thgese measures go further than just reporting whether the project was delivered on time, within budget, and to scope.  

What are the measures of project delivery success?

•    The project management needs to be successful i.e., all the items listed above
•    It is also critical that a successful business outcome is delivered:
•    With respect to increased revenues or decreased costs
•    With respect to the expected time period when these benefits would be realised.

Usually, unlike project management success, the project benefits realisation is not immediate.  Most projects will not deliver the full benefits until sometime after implementation, possibly even 2 or more years.  This means that the project team will have been disbanded long before the benefits are realised.

The Post Project Review (PPR) is a useful tool for measuring the benefits realisation for the project.

Who is responsible for project success?

Obviously the project manager is responsible for the various project management success measures.

But the delivery of the business outcomes is the responsibility of the sponsor.

This is where it gets very tricky.

If the project fails to deliver then there may be a number of causes. Some of the underlying causes may well be attributed to failures of the project management, but ultimately the delivery of the business benefits are the responsibility of the project sponsor.

The project manager may have put together the business case, but the content is the responsibility of the sponsor.  The sponsor is therefore accountable for the documented assumptions, and for the realisation of benefits from the project.  

So to summarise then, project success incorporates the measurement of project management success in addition to the delivery of the planned business benefits, and cannot be measured fully until the benefits realisation period has passed.

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