Project management has become an important role in today’s professional challenges for any type of business or industry, making it important for us to be able to measure its success. Managers often differ on how to keep track of it as they define success according to their own experiences, knowledge or context. For some, success can be something tangible like allocated budget or customer satisfaction while others consider effective communication, stakeholder involvement or even collaboration as successes.
The above means that in order to have a holistic view on how to measure project management, we need to consider objective and subjective criteria; however, we will start by defining what success is since without understanding it, we will not be able to measure it properly.
What does project management success look like?
It’s obvious that success should be partly defined by hard metrics but they should not be the only focus of it. That is because there are many other intangible factors to consider such as the project’s capacity to contribute to the company’s overall strategy, customer satisfaction and more.
Here is a list of items that need to be considered while measuring project success:
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Project Schedule
Project management is often measured by whether you are capable or not of keeping up with the original timing of the project. Project managers are often concerned about time management and find that achieving a positive outcome around it is especially difficult but a better way of evaluating time frames and your work is to do it on the go. Our recommendation is to schedule a regular update of your work schedule every week.
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Budget
Us and basically most executives think that cost is one of the highest priorities in a project, so appraising your financial performance is crucial. Did you deliver the project within budget? Are you over or under the budget at a particular phase of the project? What can you do to follow the budget and not over spend?
Delivering a project on budget should be considered one of the greatest factors of success.
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Quality
The goal is not only to deliver the project under the quality standards set at the beginning of the project but to go the extra mile and exceed expectations. Even when the project is finished, it is always good to do a quality assurance test (QA) to compare the original set of goals to the delivered project.
In addition, you have to consider if the project was delivered smoothly, or if the stakeholders and team members are satisfied with the end result.
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Customer satisfaction
This is the stage when you know if the software or web development project is ready for the market. Your team has to await for the the client’s feedback. This review process has to take into account several aspects to really understand the overall quality of the product or service. You should expect feedback about the product’s perceived reliability, the compliance of the customer’s needs and their continued use and behavior. Would your customers buy or perform the desired goal of the product again?
If you reached this point, you’ve achieved your ultimate goal and have an attractive product ready for the market.
