Reframing Project Success

How do we measure project success? Speaking at PMI Global Summit 2024 in Los Angeles, California, USA, Pierre Le Manh, president and CEO of PMI, kicked off a fresh debate. He issued a challenge to the project management community to join him in a movement to reframe the question in terms of what the profession brings to the world and for what it is accountable. Broadening our perspective from project management success to fully embracing project success, Le Manh explained, will serve PMI’s purpose, help the profession gain the recognition that it deserves, and expand career opportunities.

Get the Fundamentals Right but Shift to Focus on Value

Operating in a world that measures project performance according to the triple constraint – delivering the required scope, within the established budget and schedule – is no longer sufficient. Now, it is necessary to evolve to think more strategically and focus on project outcomes for company, community and society. Moving forward, this means getting the project management fundamentals right AND prioritizing the perception of value by stakeholders. The PMI CEO issued a call to action to project professionals to own this shift to better define what project success looks like and identify the factors that contribute to project success or failure.

PMI reviewed 50 years of the most significant research on project success before initiating the largest research project of this type to date. In collaboration with Kantar, a respected third-party research firm, this included 55+ survey questions that were completed by nearly 10,000 people from 139 countries, both inside and outside of the PMI community. It was supplemented by a series of almost 100 interviews with project professionals, PMO leaders, sponsors, organization executives and intended beneficiaries. The results were subject to rigorous data analysis and statistical modeling to capture the consensus definition of project success. Over 50 additional interviews were then conducted to gauge understanding and clarity of the definition.

The consensus view emerging from our research considers both project execution and expected outcomes: Successful projects deliver value that was worth the effort and expense.

Project success is not binary but can be rated on a continuum. Respondents were asked to rate their last project or program, on a scale from 0 to 10, for the extent to which it delivered value that was worth the effort and expense. Overall, 48% of projects qualified as successful, with 12% an outright failure and 40% with mixed views. PMI used this data to calculate a Global Net Project Success Score of 36 (48% rated successful – 12% rated failure = 36). The PMI CEO pointed out that the NPSS is actionable and urged project professionals to place the same importance on reducing the rate of failure as they do on increasing the rate of clear success.

Maximize Success with a Well-Established Performance Measurement System

But how can we maximize our chance of success? Having a well-established performance measurement system in place to align and guide decision-making is key. Simply put, defining, measuring and tracking success makes it more likely you will achieve it. PMI identified three factors that contribute to achieving the maximum benefit:

• Defining success criteria upfront
• Putting a performance measurement system in place
• Tracking performance throughout the project

Only 37% of all projects do all three of these things. Implementing all three factors nearly doubles the NPSS compared to projects that have two or fewer of these factors.

Activate Performance Levers to Increase the NPSS

Measurement is the top “performance lever” the PMI community can activate to increase the success (NPSS) of their projects. Performance levers are the types of activities to do, capabilities to prioritize, or conditions to foster that may increase your chances of success. Just having a measurement system in place (the second of the three factors noted above) resulted in an observed difference in NPSS from an average of 6 to an average of 45 – multiplying the NPSS by 7.2x. Other performance levers and their success multipliers are:

• Caring for team morale – 4.2x
• Adequate funding to completion – 3.3x
• Effective resource management – 3.1x
• Sound business case – 2.4x
• Minimum start-up difficulties – 1.6x

Measure What Matters by Employing Performance Themes

When implementing a measurement system, it is also important to measure what matters. PMI calls these “performance themes,” general categories of potential measurement criteria that are useful to consider when defining what success looks like upfront. It is important to note that all the top key themes were outcome-oriented; no execution themes made it into the top echelon, underscoring the importance of focusing on outcomes.

Significantly, “sustainability and social impact” was the top performance theme. Projects that measured this performance theme were 2.6 times more likely to achieve high project success rates and attained an average NPSS of 47 versus an NPSS of only 32 among those that did not. The PMI CEO highlighted the importance of perception with respect to outcomes, reminding attendees that NPSS is a 360-degree view, which heavily weights the customer’s perception of value, and he shared additional top performance themes and their success multipliers:

• Level of quality – 1.6x
• Customer satisfaction – 1.6x
• Safety – 1.6x
• Met defined requirement – 1.5x
• Employee experience – 1.5x

PMI also calculated project success rates and found quite significant industry variance. Industrials, construction, healthcare, and financial services all had success rates above the average global NPSS score of 36, with government projects and consulting projects trailing other categories with a score that was significantly below average.

Reframing project success to reflect a more customer-centric and value-driven mindset provides an opportunity for the project management community to increase our perceived impact and therefore gain recognition. Learn more about project success when the full report is published later this year.

Join our webinar, Project Success Defined and Measured, on 9 October 2024, 11:00 AM EDT (UTC-4), to get an overview of the Project Success Initiative and learn more about our newly unveiled definition of success.