How should you measure project success?

Now, you will consider alternative approaches to success by exploring what Locatelli's 2014 paper suggests about project success.

According to the iron triangle, a project (eg building an airport) was considered a success if the project manager was able to deliver it within time and budget constraints and meet the customer's specifications.

While many practitioners still adopt this definition, several academics and large organisations working in major project environments now look at other factors.

In his 1999 article Atkinson provides another way of analysing the success of a project:

Locatelli (2014) discusses, one example of a project delivered on time and budget, but which does not conform to Atkinson's measures of success: Terminal 5 at London Heathrow airport. It was built with all the required physical and electronic specifications outlined in the project documents. However, once the terminal was opened, its systems failed. Hundreds of flights were cancelled and thousands of bags were misplaced on their journey. This was due to imperfections in commissioning, integration and the lack of a trained workforce.

You might describe this project using the old adage known in many cultures: 'the surgery was a success, but the patient died'. This illustrates the difference between a successful process (like surgery performed well or like an airport perfectly built) and the final outcome (like the recovery of the patient or having people able to travel).

Alternative measures of project success

How could project success be approached differently?

There is still some confusion when outlining the difference between a successful project and project management success. Shenhar and Dvir (1997) state that:

"In our journey toward a comprehensive understanding of project success, one should not confuse any more between project management success and project success. Semantically, project management success refers to efficiency, an internal concern to the project team, and project success embraces concerns for efficiency and effectiveness—in other words, all concerns, whether internal or external, short-term or long-term." - (Shenhar & Dvir,1997, n.p).

Aaron et al. (2001) present four major distinct success dimensions we can use to assess a project. These are:

  1. Project efficiency.

  2. Impact on the customer.

  3. Direct business and organisational success.

  4. Preparing for the future.

They stress the importance of using these success dimensions to tailor the definition of project success according to the characteristics of the project itself.

Please refer to the glossary to check any terminology you are unfamiliar with: Glossary of Project Management Terms

Coming up...

In the next section you will be introduced to the concept of extended perspective.