Success is among the most subjective qualities in life we are trying to measure. However, lucky for project managers, their measures for success are much more specific than in other aspects of our personal and professional lives. Project managers identify goals, objectives, and deliverables in every stage of the project pre-planning. This allows determining a project’s success as we can look back and make sure those goals are addressed in a meaningful way.
Measuring your project’s success
It goes without saying that you can measure your project’s success several times before it is completed. Moreover, if you are a project manager, you can even benefit from regularly checking in to see where you stand. This approach ensures that you do not have any unexpected obstacles toward the end of a project life cycle. You will not find yourself in a situation when you suddenly realize that many tasks are left untouched. For instance, you can consider allocating time once a week to see if you are progressing at the right pace and project milestones and budget are taken into account.
Milestones and schedule
If you are one month into a project and you are not where you are supposed to be, it is time to develop a new strategy, readjust, and hire more employees. Your schedule can be considered successful if you hit deadlines as expected. Are your initial estimations of project completion correct? If yes, this area can be considered a success. If not, find out why you missed the deadlines and learn from your mistakes when you work with other projects in the future.
Budget
Staying within a project budget is crucial. It happens quite often that people cannot afford to go over budget, so they have to call off the whole project. Your project’s success depends on whether people in charge can stay within the constraints they established at the beginning. It is crucial to monitor how much you spend on a regular basis. This way, you can monitor your course and help you avoid heading down a path of over-spending. When your project is complete, you can analyze your budget and assess your success. It is a win if you have accomplished the goals and deliverables with the resources you initially planned. Otherwise, it is necessary to analyze your spendings and learn from this experience to avoid over-spending in the future.
Quality assessment
If you are a professional in charge of the project, you should determine whether the completed work corresponds to your expectations. If your project is a website, you need to make sure that it fits all of your client’s needs. It is crucial to measure the quality of a service or product in accordance with the user’s expectations or needs.
Conclusion
Project management is about reflection. We try, fail, succeed, learn, and approach it again. The only way for a project manager to fail is to be unwilling to learn from the many lessons their projects have in store.
