You’re a project manager in Engineering Management. How can you evaluate the impact of your latest project?

1 Define success criteria

Before you start your project, you should define what success looks like for your project. What are the goals, objectives, and deliverables of your project? How will you measure them quantitatively and qualitatively? What are the expected benefits and risks of your project? How will you align your project with your stakeholder needs and expectations? By defining your success criteria, you can set a clear baseline and direction for your project, and communicate them to your team and stakeholders.

2 Collect feedback

During and after your project, you should collect feedback from your stakeholders, your team, and your customers. Feedback is essential to understand how your project is perceived, how it meets or exceeds the requirements, and how it solves the problems or creates the opportunities. You can use various methods to collect feedback, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, reviews, testimonials, or ratings. You should also analyze the feedback and identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your project.

3 Use metrics and indicators

Another way to evaluate your project impact is to use metrics and indicators that track and measure your project performance and outcomes. Metrics and indicators are numerical values that show how well your project is progressing, delivering, and achieving its goals. You can use different types of metrics and indicators, such as time, cost, quality, scope, risk, customer satisfaction, or return on investment. You should also choose the metrics and indicators that are relevant, reliable, and realistic for your project.

4 Compare results with expectations

Once you have collected feedback and metrics, you should compare them with your success criteria and expectations. How did your project perform against your planned schedule, budget, quality, and scope? How did your project deliver against your stakeholder needs, expectations, and satisfaction? How did your project contribute to your organizational goals, values, and vision? By comparing your results with your expectations, you can evaluate your project impact and identify the gaps, issues, or improvements.

5 Learn and improve

The final step of evaluating your project impact is to learn from your experience and improve your future projects. What did you do well and what did you do poorly in your project? What were the best practices and lessons learned from your project? What were the challenges and risks that you faced and how did you overcome them? What were the recommendations and suggestions for improvement from your feedback and metrics? By learning and improving from your project, you can enhance your skills, knowledge, and performance as a project manager in engineering management.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?