Digitalization has led to such rapid and frequent changes that business problems or goals that originally triggered a project shift over time or even disappear completely. Unnecessary projects waste time, money and resources and do not add any value to your company.
THE RISK: The Project Management Institute (PMI) states in its 2018 Pulse of the Profession study that last year, 31% of projects did not meet their original business goals and objectives.
How to monitor the achievement of business goals: You probably have a number of projects waiting for someone to give the go-ahead. Before you give any of them the green light, a cross-departmental committee should review the business case to make sure it still aligns with the company's goals.
The following questions should be asked, among others:
Is the project unique?
Where does the project stand in relation to the business objectives? (Is it a high, medium or low priority?)
What is the risk-return profile? (High risk, high return, low risk, low return)
Once the project is launched, you should regularly align the goals with the business requirements to ensure that the project will ultimately deliver value.
key performance indicators for project success
Example matrix with projects prioritized by business goal
5. Customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction refers to the extent to which project results meet – or exceed – expectations. This includes the quality of the results, the overall customer experience, customer service, and communication between internal and external stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle.
This criterion for project success is extremely important and yet is often the most neglected. Does it matter if you are one point ahead or 100 points ahead if both mean victory? That depends on the project and the other success criteria that have been applied.
But don't forget that 52% of customers switched providers in the past year due to poor customer service, according to Accenture's Global Consumer Pulse survey —and after switching, 68% don't return to their original provider.
THE RISK: According to Gartner's IT Key Metrics Data 2018 report (available to Gartner clients), 26% of internal project participants (from the board of directors to IT staff) do not feel that they have adequately met customer expectations, rating their perception of customer satisfaction as "not meeting expectations" or "somewhat disappointing."
There are several methods to collect and analyze feedback from your customers. These include:
social media listening
Customer surveys (including open-ended questions with free response options, not just korea telegram data ratings based on numbers)
Project success criteria: Adhere to the project schedule and budget
Create a customer satisfaction survey in Nextiva (
source )
Conclusion
“Fast, cheap or good – you can choose two of them.”
This saying about the well-known dilemma is so popular for a reason. It is just as true (if not more so) when stakeholder satisfaction and the achievement of business goals are included as additional factors.
Early in the planning process, identify the limiting factors that are most important to you in your project and set them as your success criteria.
Most importantly, ensure that everyone involved is equally committed to achieving success in this area and is actively working towards it.
Do you use other methods to measure project success? Are there other success criteria you use to evaluate performance? Tell us about it in the comments!