Post 6 - A Project's Success

I thought in this post It would be a great idea to share with you an interesting part of project management came across.

As I continued my daily reading of the PMBOK Guide, I started becoming familiar with the project life cycle, processes/ activities, business cases and business needs in project management.

 However, I still had an important question, which I didn't have an answer to.

That question was ' How do we determine whether a project is successful'? 

Strangely enough, through my initial readings of the organisation and it's planned objectives, I remember thinking to myself, surely there are different stakeholders in a given project, so each one must have an intended outcome as well as his own idea of what the important success factor for the project is.

It was good that I continued reading as I was able to understand that project management acknowledges these varying stakeholders interests and I also found out how it deals with them.

I discovered that a project manager has to document clearly defined objectives of stakeholders in order to select the measurable ones that can he can then use to measure success. 

Undefined objectives leave room for questions of whether or not results have been produced.

It was interesting to come across some of the important questions a project manager along with the stakeholders should answer.

What does success look like for the project?

How will Success be measured?

What factors may impact success?

For me I can see where these answers and understanding agreements between project manager and stakeholders can play a vital role in avoiding later disagreements as to whether he result was achieved.

The above along with a proactive communication with the stakeholders and a good assessment of the project situation could help with the success of a project.

More importantly, I discovered that as long as the project remains aligned with the plan and strategic direction of the company, then it's likely to succeed.

The success will inevitably be measured through the analysis of the project delivery results.

Please feel free to add on to this any suggestions or comments