Elements of Project Success

There are three key?elements of every project on the planet - Cost, Schedule, and the performance of the product or service produced by the project. Each of these has?drivers. The connections between Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance are different from?Iron?as suggested in the?Iron Triangle?of a PMI view of the project. Instead, the connections are elastic,?springy, and flexible. But they are connected.

Drivers of the Three Elements

Cost is driven by:

• Labor - how many people do we have on this project?
• Materials - what's or raw material cost, and what's the conversation rate for that material?
• When we spend money, how efficient are we? What's our efficacy of funds? Do we get - at a minimum -?$1.00 in return for every $1.00 spent?
• What's our overhead rate, our fully burdened costs of labor and materials?
• What are the other?indirect costs? Benefits, facilities??

These costs are themselves variable, as a function of the project phase, external forces for labor, materials, and overhead. But the cost?variable?starts with these.

The schedule is driven by:

• The irreducible uncertainties of the work being performed. All work durations are random variables. The shape of the?Probability Distribution Function?can be known, but the exact probability of occurrence of any one duration for any one task can not. So to protect from this uncertainty, we need a schedule, cost, and technical margin.
• The reducible uncertainties are?event-based.?There is a probability that the material we order will arrive differently than planned, and we'll have a delay in our project and have to pay for labor waiting to start work. We can spend money to reduce or eliminate reducible uncertainty.?There is a probability that when we test the new data-based server with the actual data, it will not perform as needed. We can spend money and time testing the scalability of the database.
• The capacity for work impacts the schedule. We are not as clever as we thought. We cannot work the planned number of hours as we thought. Our capacity to do the work is impacted in ways we should have thought of.

Technical Performance is driven by:

• Unrealistic Expectations of the Effectiveness and Performance of the resulting technology
• We have an unanticipated risk.
• Our solution doesn't scale, isn't as reliable as we need, is harder to repair, and needs to meet the technical, performance, or effectiveness goals.

So What Does All This Mean?

• The three elements of a project are not independent.
• One impacts others.
• Two impacts the third.
• There are constant tradeoffs.
• All elements are random processes, possibly known, sometimes unknown.

But for project success, we need to have several things in place. The random behavior has to be knowable. It can't be chaos. If it is chaos, the project will fail because there is no corrective action.

The three elements need to be known to some degree of confidence.

What's the target schedule?

• When does the customer need to outcomes of the project?
• What are the delivery times for the intermediate outcomes of the project, so the customer can look at them and determine if they are what was needed before it's too late to correct them?

How much is this project going to cost when we're done?

• How much money will we need along the way?
• In exchange for this cost, what is the beneficial outcome, to offset the cost?
• This is the fundamental?Return on Investment?calculation ROI = (Benefit - Cost) / Cost. If we don't know the cost we can't know the value.
• We may know the cost because it is fixed, but then we need to know the schedule and the value produced in exchange for that fixed cost and schedule in terms of capabilities.

What are we building?

• Is it the right thing to build? How do we know? Do we have some?Concept of Operations, a?Statement of Work, or?Statement of?Objectives, sticky notes on the white, 3x5 cards that say what?DONE?looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision-makers?

How can we ensure our building meets the customer's needs?

• What are the?Measures of Effectiveness?that state the operational measures of success that are closely related to the achievements of the mission or operational objectives evaluated in the operational environment under a specific set of conditions?
• What measures of Performance characterize physical or functional attributes relating to the system operation, measured or estimated under specific conditions?
• What are the?Key Performance Parameters?that represent the capabilities and characteristics so significant that failure to meet them can cause reevaluation, reassessing, or termination of the program?
• What are the?Technical Performance Measures?that are the attributes that determine how well a system or system element is satisfying or expected to satisfy a technical requirement or goal?

Do know these to some degree of confidence. You need to know what?DONE?looks like. The only measure of progress becomes the passage of time and the consumption of money. It's unlikely any customer will be willing to pay you - at least for very long - to spend their money without some understanding of Cost, Schedule, and the resulting Technical Outcomes.

The?variables in the project or the product development process are?random variables, their reducible and irreducible uncertainties creating risk to the probability of project success. Answering the questions above and the many other?questions encountered in the business of writing software for money requires us to make estimates of the outcomes of any decision that impacts the project or product. With these estimates, decisions can be made about the?best?path to take to increase the probability of success. By?best,?it means the?best with the?probabilistic?knowledge at hand.

Increasing the Probability of Program Success(project or product) must be the goal of every process improvement effort. When we hear of some new and untested approach to developing software in the presence of uncertainty while spending other people's money, ask?how this increases the probability of success?in units of measure meaningful to the decision-maker. Rarely is that decision-maker the one spending the money.

Why Projects Fail - The Real Reason

Let's start with the success criteria for any project or program.

The measures of project success?MUST?start with two other measures.

• Measures of Effectiveness - The operational measures of success that are closely related to the achievements of the mission or operational objectives evaluated in the operational environment under a specific set of conditions.
• Measures of Performance - Measures that characterize physical or functional attributes relating to the system operation, measured or estimated under specific conditions.

Measures of Effectiveness (MoE)

• Are stated in units meaningful to the buyer,
• Focus on capabilities independent of any technical implementation,
• Are connected to the mission's success.

MoEs belong to the End User. They define the units of measure

Measures of Performance (MoP)

• Attributes that assure the system has the capability to perform,
• Assessment of the system to assure it meets design requirements to satisfy the MoE.

MoPs belong to the Program - Developed by the Systems Engineer, measured by the Control Account Managers, and analyzed by program controls staff.

Key Performance Parameters (KPP)

Represent the capabilities and characteristics so significant that failure to meet them can cause reevaluation, reassessing, or termination of the program.

• Have a threshold or objective value,
• Characterize the major drivers of performance,
• Are considered Critical to Customer (CTC).

The acquirer defines the KPPs during the operational concept development - KPPs say what is "DONE."

Technical Performance Measures (TPM)

Attributes that determine how well a system or system element is satisfying or expected to satisfy a technical requirement or goal.

Technical Performance Measures:

• Assess design progress,
• Define compliance with performance requirements,
• Identify technical risks,
• Are limited to critical thresholds,
• Include projected performance.

These measures are the "success criteria" for the project. This includes the cost, schedule, and technical performance. This means that the notion of "quality, cost, and schedule" - the famous Iron Triangle - is not very useful for the following reasons:

• Quality is part of a Technical Performance Measure
• Measures of Effectiveness and Performance speak directly to the customer's acceptance of the project's output.

This last statement is where we get in trouble with the project's measure of "success." With these two Systems Engineering measures, the customer and the supplier cannot recognize DONE when it enters the door.

The result is a high percentage of reported failures. Forget the "over budget" and "over schedule." These are secondary to the MoE and MoP compliance.

The Final Word

The principles are the basis of project or program success no matter the domain, context, or development and management processes - from Agile to compliance with FAR 34.2 and DFARS 234.2

Resources for Elements of Projects Success

• Increasing the Probability of Project Success with 5 Principles, 5 Practices, and 10 Processes, Assessed with 25 Essential Views
• Essential Views of the Integrated Program Management Reports
• Increasing the Probability of Program Success
• 5 Immutable Principles of Project Success?
• Showing How to Increase the Probability of Project Success by applying the Five Immutable Principles of Project Success in Under Four Hours
• Increasing Your Project's Probability of Success
• Strategy for Increasing the Probability of Project Success
• Integrating Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance to Increase the Probability of Program Success
• Increasing the Probability of Program Success with Continuous Risk Management
• Integrating Systems Engineering and Project Management to Increase Probability of Project Success?

Here is a collection of Conference Briefings, Training Materials & Master Classed for Successfully Managing Traditional & Agile Complex Systems of Systems