Project Success – Why do mature organization measure project success against scoped Quality, Schedule & Budget?
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Support of strategic plan
The simple answer is strategic plan. For organizational survival and consistent growth all activities of the organization including project success must be linked directly to support of the strategic plan. Or the organization has no reason to perform the activity. This is what separates the high performing organization from the average organization. It makes no difference if the organization is for profit, non-profit or a charity, all organizational activities must have a direct and recognizable link to the strategic plan. This holds the same for operational and project activities. The Association for Strategic Planning (ASP; http://www.strategyplus.org/index.shtml) explains in their “How to Create a Balanced Scorecard” (http://www.balancedscorecard.org/BSCResources/TheNineStepstoSuccess/tabid/58/Default.aspx) how the organization must be aligned (Step Eight: Alignment) throughout the organization down to the business unit, team and finally the individual. It is this linkage that provides alignment around the organizational strategy. It is the accountability that follows the implementation of objectives and measures with ownership at each level that provides the required alignment to successfully implement the strategic plan.
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Organization Project Management
To ensure projects the organization undertakes are linked to the strategic plan there must be a level of coordination throughout the organization. Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) presents Organizational Project Management (OPM) as the tool for linking management of projects, programs and portfolios throughout the organization. Portfolio management is a critical key in linking project activities to the strategic plan. According to PMBOK: “A portfolio refers to projects, programs, subportfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.”
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Consistent measure of project efforts
To ensure that projects achieve the desired result towards the strategic objective requires each project is measured and evaluated on a regular basis. This also requires that all projects must utilize consistent measurement criteria suitable to the organization’s environment. PMBOK suggest that the success of the project will be measured within the constraints of scope, time, cost, quality, resources and risk which are agreed upon at the start of the project. I will simplify this list to the measurable criteria of Quality as determined by the scope, the agreed Schedule and allocated Budget or cost established at the start of the project. Each project will have its unique Quality or scope which will drive the schedule and budget. It is the monitoring of each of these quantifiable and measurable criteria that provides the organization the means to assess the success of the project and its eventual contribution to the linked strategic goal.
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Efficient use of organizational resources
The consistent measure of the projects against similar criteria will ensure the organization utilizes resources most efficiently and to their maximum level. It is the rare organization that will withstand waste of resources – human, financial or physical. Since the organization acquires and allocates resources to support the organization’s mission and related strategic goals it is imperative that projects are as efficient as possible in utilizing the assigned resources.
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PMO maturity
What can or will drive this move towards project measurement and the resultant project success? The answer according to me is a ‘Mature PMO’. A mature PMO is one that understands the linkage between ‘projects’ and the strategic plan. More importantly the ‘organization’ drives the PMO to achievement of successful projects. To reach the level of a mature PMO the organization must be driven at the most senior level to a linkage between all activities the organization undertakes. This requires the PMO to establish a methodology that measures all projects equally. The only way an organization can achieve this equality is a consistent measurement of Quality, Schedule and Cost.