Welcome to the week

Welcome to Week 4 of Major engineering project performance. You have already learned about major project performance and have identified some of the factors influencing poor project performance. Now, you will consider how you can evaluate project success. What makes a project a success or failure?

This week you will find out the difference between project success and project management success. You will explore a case study analysis of the Motorola Iridium project to help you reach conclusions about measures of success. You will also be introduced to an alternative way of analysing the success of major projects in terms of the iron triangle.

In the final part of this week, you will be introduced to the Turner and Zolin framework. This framework demonstrates that project success is multidimensional. Case studies on the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Thames Barrier will help you consolidate these definitions of success.

By the end of this week you will have demonstrated that you have met the following course learning outcomes:

• interpret the performance of historical major projects

• describe the success of a project according to different criteria and stakeholders’ perspective.