IT managers want their projects to be successful, but only a few take the time to define what success means. For example, if you have delivered products or services within the allocated budget and time, can you consider that a success? It could be. However, if your project failed to meet stakeholder expectations, you must establish criteria to evaluate success. This Indeed article discusses qualitative and quantitative ways of measuring project success.
Why Is Measuring Project Success Crucial?
"Successful criteria for project management are benchmarks that you use to determine if the work meets expectations and fulfills the needs of end users," says the author. If you want to achieve project success, you have to define what success looks like. Measuring project success upon its completion is a valuable practice as it offers a learning opportunity for your team and organization. Furthermore, it will also guide you on how to undertake projects in the future by examining their effectiveness.
Factors to Consider While Measuring Project Success
Feedback From Team Members and Clients
Effective communication with clients helps you understand the quality they expect from your deliverables. This will further enable you to establish internal processes, policies, and procedures to manage a project. Being receptive to your team members' feedback allows you to enhance workflows, develop best practices, and improve operations for future projects.
Schedule and Budget
While measuring project success, ask yourself if your team could deliver a project within the allocated time and budget. Evaluate how well your project is performing financially. You must be able to explain any variances if there are any.
Team Satisfaction
Get feedback from your team and identify if they are happy with the end results. Remember, your team members have better insight into the project than anyone else since they work on it hands-on. How they feel about the project will help you determine their motivation levels to undertake the next.
The author suggests you find measurable ways to evaluate each type of criteria. For example, budget and timelines must have clear cut-off points to ascertain if you met the requirements. Introduce survey methods to measure customer satisfaction. To read the original article, click on https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/successful-criteria.