Project success criteria is a frequent topic that I am asked about. It’s actually one of the most searched terms here. I decided it was time to combine all my resources into a single guide to project success criteria.
This article:
How to define success criteria
What are the most important criteria for project success?
There are two types of success criteria for a project. Criteria for project management
2. Criteria for delivering the deliverables
How to document your success criteria
How to measure success in a project
Performance of baselining
How do I track success criteria
Summary of the criteria for project success
Next,
Let’s begin with a definition for project success criteria.
How to define success criteria
The project success criteria are the criteria that will be used to determine if the project has been successful.
Okay, that’s it. Let’s now look at the reasons we should care about project success criteria.
What are the most important criteria for project success?
Organizations don’t define failure. We don’t know how to determine if a project is failing – what failure looks and feels like – because it’s not motivating to think about failure when the work has just begun.
External and internal stakeholders can easily label projects as failing if there is no formal definition of failure.
Think about the recent projects that have made headlines in any country. Because people can’t see what success looks like, media and stakeholders label projects ‘failures’.
Is it on time? Is it on time? These two things may not matter to the stakeholders if they get great results and happy customers. This is the theme of my book Customer-Centric project management.
Successful organizations take the guesswork out this process by defining what success looks like so they can know when they have achieved them. You must define success for your project if you want to achieve project success.
Maybe budget is the most important thing for your stakeholders and quality is being put on the back burner. Customer satisfaction may be the most important thing, and it doesn’t matter how many overtime hours are required to achieve that end result.
To increase engagement with stakeholders, project success criteria can be a great tool.
This set of templates provides additional tools for stakeholder management. It includes everything you need to organize and develop successful working relationships with your team.
These can be used to set the goals for the project and track progress. If your stakeholders stop caring about your success criteria, it’s a warning sign that you need more to keep them on your side.
The project success criteria are the standards that will be used to determine if the project has been successful.
You must define what success looks like so you can claim it. You will need to identify two types of success criteria for your project.
There are two types of success criteria for a project.
You want to know how to determine if your project was a success. It is important to define what success looks like for both you and your stakeholders. This is best done by brainstorming with your team.
1. Criteria for project management
You will likely come up with success criteria for the management of your project during this process. These success criteria can be used in project audits and post-project reviews.
They help you focus on the ‘business of project management’ and how to do the project right. They help you ensure that you are hitting all the right targets, and are following project management standards.