Today, the role of the project manager in supporting strategic business priorities has become more important than ever. In this article, we focus on 10 project success criteria examples, which, in our opinion, will help project managers to monitor performance and optimize the workflow.
10 Project Management Success Metrics
1. Customer Satisfaction Index
CSI is based on surveys held among existing customers of companies, users of certain products/services. CSI goals:
- Identifying hidden factors that affect customer satisfaction.
- Determining the reasons for falling/increasing demand for goods and services.
- Optimizing the company's business processes to the needs of the modern consumer.
- Forming an effective advertising message and positioning at the request of the client (when launching advertising campaigns and promo).
2. Productivity
In the case of projects in the IT sector, this means the percentage of time spent on project work, as opposed to the time spent on maintenance. This indicator should be measured in comparison with its planned value to evaluate the implementation of new technologies and business investments.
3. Cost Performance
Project cost management integrates the processes carried out during planning, budget development and expense control, ensuring the fulfillment of the project within the approved budget.
4. Cycle Time
These measuring project success metrics define the life cycle of a project as a sequence of phases that the project passes from its beginning to completion.
The standard project life cycle scheme consists of five phases:
- Initiation
- Planning
- Execution
- Control
- Completion
Usually, once a new project is started, these five phases follow one after another, but not always. For example, in case you need to add any changes during the project, you can return to the planning phase to take the changes into account, but you will not have to repeat the entire cycle again starting from the initiation phase.
This level of flexibility eases management processes and contributes to project success.
5. Return on Investment
ROI - these project success metrics mean an indicator of return on investment. In percentage terms, it shows the profitability (with a value of more than 100%) or unprofitableness (with a value of less than 100%) of a specific amount of money invested in a particular project.
6. Cost of Quality
This metric characterizes the release of the final product of the project in such a way that this product meets the specified quality standards. These are the costs of prevention, assessment, as well as the expenses caused by poor quality.
7. Schedule Performance
The quality of the schedule depends on the way the manager implements a number of mandatory procedures, the most important among which is the accounting of the main deadlines (in terms of content, time, and resources). The first step in this direction is the planning of the project as a certain combination of services and products on the subject of the task. The content of the project is a sufficiently comprehensive concept, which includes:
- A describing part with the explanation of the reasons for launching the product, as well as the opportunities that it carries.
- Goals and results of tasks at different levels of working on the end goal (product).
- Identification of the connection between the project and the company's development strategy.
- The boundaries of the project within which the product arises, the authority and responsibility of the PM.
- Basic requirements for the product and its parameters.
- Identification of restrictions.
- Performance criteria.
8. Requirements Performance
The Complete Performance Index is an estimated performance indicator of the project. This is the ratio between “remaining work” and “remaining budget”.
9. Employee Satisfaction
This project success criteria shows the employees’ attitude towards various aspects of the work, such as:
- Workload;
- Work safety;
- Remuneration;
- Working conditions;
- Status and prestige of work;
- Proximity to colleagues;
- Company performance assessment policy.
Employee satisfaction depends on how well the company meets the needs of this employee. For this, the leadership should identify the basic needs of every person, inspiring them to be engaged in their professional activity, and satisfy these needs. As a result, the company will receive high job satisfaction from the employee, thus, a high loyalty level.
10. Alignment with Strategic Business Goals
This metric shows the average cost of projects that met at least one strategic goal of the company compared to the total number of projects.
The KPIs That Really Matter
Efficiency KPIs are an indicator that characterizes the ratio of the result obtained to the resource costs. Here are the types of key performance indicators:
- result;
- resource costs;
- functioning;
- performance - the ratio of the result and the time spent on achieving it.
There are the features of a successful project you need to adhere to when developing key performance indicators. The cost of measuring the performance indicators should not exceed the managerial benefit of using the indicator.
For a more accurate result and the possibility for comparison, indicators should be measurable and as simple as possible, as well as understood equally by each unit to avoid misinformation. And, most importantly, KPIs should be followed on. They are useless if you do nothing after measuring them.
