Elements of Project Success (Part 2)

There's a continuing discussion on LinkedIn and Twitter about project success, the waste of certain project activities, and the endless argument about estimating the Cost of producing project value. It's an argument without evidence since some of the protagonists in the estimating discussion have yet to come up with alternatives.

A few years after reading "Reinventing Project Management" by Aaron Shenhar and Dov Dir, Harvard University Press, I understood that project success is multidimensional. The other book that changed my view of the world was IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results by Peter Weill and Jeanne W. Roos, also Harvard University Press.?

This second book should put a stake in the heart of #NoEstimates since the?decision rights for those needing and asking for the Cost and schedule for the business capabilities belong to those with the money, not those spending the money.

A summary of the book can be found in the paper, "Project Success: A Multidimensional Strategic Concept," Aaron Shenhar, Dov Dvir, Ofer Levy, and Alan Maltz,?Long Range Planning 34, (2001) pp 699-725.

There is often not a "product" per se but a "service." In today's enterprise paradigm, these are wrapped in a larger context as "capabilities."

The work provides the capabilities to accomplish a goal, mission, or business outcome or fulfill a strategy. This is done through products, processes, or services, all of which are used by people, other methods, and other products to accomplish different goals, missions, or outcomes.

This is the System of Systems paradigm view of the "project."

Shenhar and Dvir's research and Levy and Maltz's in the paper showed four dimensions of success.

1. Project Efficiency - meeting schedule goals, meeting budget goals, meeting the technical project goals. These goals start with estimates of the cost schedule and technical performance possibilities. These are?estimates, and they have confidence intervals. With these estimates, the most straightforward business assessment can be made. The Return on Investment = (Value - Cost) / Cost. More complex assessments are needed.?Capabilities-based Planning?is one approach, as are Real Options, Balanced Scorecard, and others.
2. Impact on Customer?-?meeting functional performance and technical specifications, fulfilling customer needs, solving a customer's problem, using the product or service, and customer satisfaction. In the Systems Engineering paradigm, these are assessed using measures of effectiveness (MOE), measures of performance (MOP), technical performance measures (TPM), and critical performance parameters (TPP). The custoCustomero ever that is defined as - bought a capability to do something. This something?can be a business process, a mission fulfillment, a service, or a process. The users of the something define the something.
3. Business Success - is a commercial success that creates a larger market share. Other measures are needed for public projects, and for defense and space, mission accomplishment is another. Success starts with the assessment of the Capability to fulfill its needs. This is a?strategy-making process.?A Balanced Scorecard defines this in the?Strategy Map for the business or the project. In this paradigm, success is assessed by Measures of Effectiveness and Measures of Performance.
4. They are preparing for the Future - creating new markets or opportunities for further mission success, creating new product lines or bases for expanding capabilities, and developing new technologies enabling missions or goals. Projects and their outcomes rarely stand alone or have a terminal state - retirement or obsolescence of the outcomes. One measure of the project's success is its ability - the project outcomes, processes used to build them, and the people who did the work - to be the basis of future projects, products, or services.?This?evolutionary?approach is an assessment in itself.?

With this paradigm,?principles, practices, and processes become the basis of "project management" and the resulting product or service. However, Shenhar and Dvir's model better describes the measures of success since they are the direct consequences of all the enablers of that success.

So Here's the Killer Question(s)

1. If we are working to produce value, do we know the Cost of creating that value? Does?that Cost the business goals of those paying us? If it's our money, does that "cost to meet our business goals?
2. If we are working to produce value, do those paying us - or ourselves - have a time when this value is needed to meet their or our goals?
3. Do those we're working for—or ourselves—understand what?capabilities are needed from our work efforts to meet a business goal, fulfill a mission, or achieve an outcome?