Turner and Zolin framework

What does success look like for the various parties involved in a project? In the previous lesson, you explored the difference between project success and project management success, but do all stakeholders hold a consistent view of how success is measured?

In this section, you will explore a framework which Professors Turner and Zolin established.

Please read their paper and then check your understanding in the activity which follows. You can access their paper here: Turner, R and Zolin,R. 2012. Forecasting success on large projects: developing reliable scales to predict multiple perspectives by multiple stakeholders over multiple time frames Project Management Journal 43(5), pp.87-99.

Their framework provides a useful way of analysing major projects. Firstly, it outlines the different stakeholders involved in the project. Then it provides information about the interests of these stakeholders at different points of time as the project progresses.

What makes a project successful depends on the stakeholder. This may not come as a surprise, but now you can see that the view of success changes over time for the same stakeholders.

What do we mean by project success? Think about the construction of a power plant and apply Turner and Zolin’s framework.

From the utility’s point of view, they are going to run the power plant to generate electricity. They want the plant delivered within budget and they would like it to perform reliably in the future. For an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) company, this power plant might help them enter into a new market. For suppliers, the plant might help them develop different components and help them to make a profit. For tax payers or consumers, the power plant should support the provision of cheap and reliable electricity.

You can see that there are different expectations, and therefore, different measures of success.

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

Coming up...

In the next activity you will test your understanding of the Turner and Zolin framework. Later we can see its application in two extreme and iconic projects.