If I asked you what you think would make your project successful, you’d have a pretty good idea, right? But what if I asked the end user, the person who is going to be using whatever your project is producing – would they agree with you?
They probably wouldn’t. As project managers we are conditioned through training, education and professional development to think that making sure a project is delivered on time, on budget and to the required quality is important. After all, that’s what we are paid for. Our managers employ project managers precisely because we are the kind of people who can get work done by a specified date, to a certain budget and taking into account the requirements that were asked for in the first place.
But an end user doesn’t necessarily rate those qualities as important. They are more likely to be using the ‘what’s in it for me’ method of rating a project: does it make my life easier? Do I like it? Do I have to bother to learn something new or do more work?
A study from the University of Virginia looked at this and came up with some interesting results (although if you’ve been following my train of thought so far they won’t come as a surprise). Project managers rated delivering on time as the top thing for assessing success. End users rated that second to bottom on their list of what defined success. Top of their list was ‘am I actually going to use the thing?’
This isn’t surprising really: measuring the use of something is a key success criteria. After all, if no one is using your product after your project ends, what was the point of doing the work in the first place?
Project managers rated hitting budget targets as their third most important success criteria. End users rated this last. They don’t care about how much it costs: it isn’t their money and they have no reason to bother with this metric. How you managed the budget isn’t top of their list of priorities, as the study shows.
Hitting the budget targets wasn’t even top of the list of the sponsor’s priorities when it comes to judging whether a project was successful or not. They opted to put value at the top of their success list. In other words, they were more concerned with whether the project directly resulted in improved efficiency and/or better effectiveness. They rated the success of projects by financial and process measures such as internal rate of return, net present value and the like.
The next most important success criteria (the number 2 on the list) for sponsors was time. After value, it was most important for sponsors that their projects finished according to the agreed schedule. This was the top thing for project managers, and the second most important thing for project team members, but overall, when you take the results for users and executive management into account it only came out fourth on the list overall.
Product spec is the most important
Interestingly, when the results of all the different stakeholder groups were taken into account, product quality came out on top. This measure is around making sure that the end result meets the appropriate quality criteria and any other specifications such as sustainability, ease of use, maintainability and so on. Time and cost don’t even make it into the top three: what really counts is getting an end result that is fit for purpose.
Managing your stakeholders’ expectations
Of course, this is just one study and it’s not a definitive guide to what is important for your stakeholders on your project in your business. But what it does clearly show is that different stakeholders rate success differently, so it’s a good idea to take that into account.
This information is really useful when you are managing stakeholders and making sure their expectations are met – you need to know their expectations up front otherwise you don’t have a chance of being able to manage them when they are unrealistic and meet them when they aren’t! Talk to your stakeholders and find out what they think is important so that you can tailor your communications and project deliverables appropriately.
As Ryan Nelson, author of the study, says, project managers must manage the trade-off between the project process success criteria and those that the business users find most relevant that relate, typically, to outcomes (like delivered value). Include a mixture of these in your Project Charter in the success criteria section and you’ll be better able to put the puzzle pieces together to manage the diverse expectations of your stakeholders.