Project Success in 2022

There are common factors that influence the success of project management. The project time, budget, and scope are among the most important ones. The project manager is responsible for ensuring that the project is completed on time and within budget. In addition, the project manager must also ensure that the project scope is realistic and achievable. Let's take a closer look at what the success of a project is and how it can be measured.

Project success triangle: scope, time, and costs.

Trying to find out how can we know if a project was successful, we should start from the classic criterion which is providing the assumed functionality within the agreed deadline and within the budget limit. This is the so-called definition using the project management triangle: scope, time, and costs. Keeping control over those areas is undoubtedly proof of the talent and skills of the project manager. However, is this always necessary for a project to be declared successful? The reality shows that it is not. The Sydney Opera is a great example here – its construction was completed 10 years after the set deadline and its budget was exceeded fourteen times. And yet, everybody would agree that this Australian symbol can be referred to in terms of failures.

Customer’s Satisfaction

No project is a lonely island. That is why we cannot consider project success or failure in isolation from the short and long-term benefits the Customer gains from its implementation. Higher competitiveness of the organization, increase in the market share, users’ satisfaction, financial profits, or improvement of everyday team functioning are just some of the elements affecting the customer’s satisfaction. It is not without significance whether the project was implemented efficiently and what impression was made on the customer in terms of cooperation with the contractor. All this should be supplemented with a future-oriented approach. A product that provides an organization with multiple new opportunities will be perceived as a success to a much greater extent than a product that solves only the current problems.

Benefits for the Project Team

A successful project from the perspective of the person implementing it might look quite different. What can be considered the measure of success in such a case? Apart from the mere completion within the projected budget and deadline, financial benefits, and customer satisfaction, the experiences from project implementation, such as minor changes to basic project assumptions and process effectiveness, may also affect its assessment. Additionally, the factors proving the cusses are also the possibility to continue cooperation with the given customer, positive references, or maintaining a good image of the company.

Taking everything into consideration, project success can have many faces. There is no single universal measure that could be applied in all cases and the assessment method depends greatly on the point of view. That is why any project success should have the criteria and tools allowing to meet them established from the very beginning.