Extended perspective

What do we mean by project management success?

As you saw earlier, project management success refers to adhering to the budget, cost and scope of a project as planned, or at least comparable with, or better than similar projects. Merrow outlines the idea of benchmarking your project against comparable ones in his 2011 book Industrial Megaprojects: Concepts, Strategies, and Practices for Success . However, project success is wider than this.

Look at the diagram, and consider an infrastructure such as a new high speed railway or a new university.

The diagram suggests there are three main domains associated with a project:

1. The economy, environment and society, ie the 'project context' where the project is placed.

2. The project or infrastructure itself.

3. The immediate stakeholders of the project, like the sponsor (or customer), the main contractor and the key suppliers.

Imagine a simple life cycle of an infrastructure, with three main phases: the planning and delivery, operation and decommissioning. Traditionally, project management is focussed on the planning and delivery phase: looking at the infrastructure itself and the value it provides to the immediate stakeholders.

In reality, the key focus should be on the operation phase, with perspectives focussed on economy, environment and society.

For example, in building a high speed railway, you might ask if this is going to develop a region’s economy, eg will it favour commerce, or will it drain resources? You might want to investigate if many people will use this train instead of their car: this may reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The construction of a high speed railway will have a negative environmental impact, but will the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions outweigh the negative impact? This will depend on the number of passengers it carries. Since taxpayers’ money pays for building the infrastructure, is the project the best use of that resource? Would it have been better to upgrade an existing infrastructure or to develop the airlines?

You need to measure success by thinking about the project in its operational phase.

Merrow (2011) also argues about real cost-benefits analysis. You can look at the wider perspective of a project where there is a final benefit and a final cost. According to Merrow, projects typically fall into two categories: either very good or very bad. They either provide vast benefits or few benefits.

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