Success criteria of the project

Success criteria are the standards by which the project will be judged to have been successful in the eyes of the stakeholders. It is these that must be tracked to be able to answer the question of whether your project has delivered any benefits. 

There are 2 types of success criteria:

• Project: things related to the professional job of running the project.
• Deliverables: things delivered as a result of the project.

Here are his six factors for measuring the success of a project:

1. Schedule. Is there a hard deadline, or does the schedule relate to something else (budget, product launch date, etc.)? In the end, did you complete the project by the time it was due? Sometimes clients come to us with a hard deadline, other times they’re simply looking for the final product. Either way, my team always has a schedule we need to meet.

2. Scope. What do you need to get done within the timeframe? Tony refers to scope as the “stars that align to bring the client, the team, and you together.” It may be a list of features or just an idea, but the scope should essentially be the driving force of the project.

3. Budget. This is often the most important factor for many projects. In the end, did you stick to the budget? Did you come in way under budget? Your team should always know where they stand in terms of money spent. We regularly give clients a quote before they start and once we do so, we need to stick to it, or come in under. Otherwise we’re not a profitable business.

4. Team satisfaction. This is one that often goes overlooked in project management. “We often take our team for granted like a loyal friend, assuming that they’ll always be there when we need them,” Wong says. My philosophy is, I don’t ask my team to do anything I wouldn’t do. They need to have a life outside of work (although I know they all love coming into the Ciplex office everyday!), and work shouldn't feel only like an obligation. Keeping the team happy means if I do need them to work a late night here and there, they won't do it begrudgingly.

5. Customer satisfaction. Your clients might not be able to articulate exactly what they want, so often it’s your job to figure out what they’re looking for in order to make sure they’re happy with the end product. How do you track client satisfaction? Ask them to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 every week or so, and analyze and review your findings. If my team builds a website the client loves, but the client wasn’t happy with the process, we failed. You can avoid this situation by seeking constant feedback.

6. Quality of work. The quality of one project often affects another, so it's important to always track quality and make adjustments to future projects accordingly. Remember, recommendations are like free advertising. If you deliver a strong product, your client will tell people about it, and that's where your next project should come from. (POZIN, 2012)

As with any other tool or technique, project success measures can be overdone. Use the following checklist to help ensure that your measures are good measures. They should be:

• Complete—anything unmeasured is likely to be compromised.
• Relevant—variances clearly indicate a need for corrective action.
• Valid—measuring what you intended to measure.
• Easy to understand—so that people will accept them.
• Economical to obtain—know the value of the information.
• Timely—in comparison to the result measured.

The bottom-line is this. Your project will be measured. Your stakeholders will decide whether it was well-managed. Someone will decide whether or not the project of your project was a success. Do yourself, your team, and your organization a service and get these measures documented and agreed to right from the start.

Bibliography

POZIN, I. (2012). ILYANEVERSLEEPS. Retrieved 2014, from http://www.inc.com/ilya-pozin/6-ways-to-measure-the-success-of-any-project.html