Conditions, factors and criteria for the successful implementation of the project. Criteria for project success Criteria for success and failure in project management

Many organizations are project-oriented. Companies exist by receiving new projects and their successful implementation. Successfully completed projects are the foundation on which an organization builds its future. Whether they involve the creation of new products, the construction of buildings, an increase in production capacity, or the introduction of a new computer system.

Project management is essential to effectively coordinate and manage an organization, ensuring that the right action is taken at the right time with a full understanding of the implications. The art of project management includes the ability to achieve goals within the established constraints on financial, material, human, time and other resources.

However, in most companies, projects do not always go smoothly. They do not fit into the routine of daily work. Gartner, a world-renowned analytics firm, estimates that 66% of large-scale projects fail to meet their stated goals. commercial purposes, are completed late, or significantly overspend the budget. The Standish group, which tracks exclusively the success and failure of IT projects, defines failed projects as projects abandoned in the middle and estimates the failure rate at 15%. At the same time, “flawed” projects (defined as projects with cost overruns, missed deadlines, and projects with unsatisfactory results) account for 51% of all IT projects.

Why So Much Projects Continue to Fail even with an increasing focus on quality project management and an increasing number of experienced and competent project managers?

The Institute of St. Gallen and the International Institute for Learning Organizations and Innovation in Munich conducted research into the causes of successful and unsuccessful projects. They concluded that causes failures are less industrial-economic or technical in nature, and are largely related to the culture of entrepreneurship, communication and information processes on the project .

According to A. Golovin, the project will fail on three occasions :

• when unrealistic plans are developed or not revised if necessary. This means they will be ripped off;
• when the project developer is not familiar with project management and is managing the project as a normal activity. Then the heads of departments do not know what to do: the main work or tasks for the project;
• when the project developer, when creating a project team, focuses not on personal qualities, but on positions. Then the project team members are unable to complete the project assignments.

Inaccurate deliverables and scope, lack of organizational commitment, poor allocation of resources and risk control, poor project management with components that are not fit for purpose, etc. - any of these reasons may cause the project to fail.

The main cause of project problems is the ability of the project manager to deal with problems while reducing risk. He must be a strong leader, able to communicate with the management of the company and meet expectations in resource management.

Poor project definition is also the main reason for its failure, starting from the approval stage. Insufficient level of accountability and responsibility at the appropriate higher level negatively affects the success of the project throughout its entire life cycle. If the customer does not manage the project or is not particularly interested in it, there is a possibility that the project will fail.

In general, it should be noted that the main reasons for project failure are:

• Requirements: Unclear, lack of mutual understanding, lack of priorities, contradictory, ambiguous, imprecise.
• Resources: Lack of resources, conflicts over resources, turnover of key resources, poor planning.
• Timing: Too concise, unrealistic, too optimistic.
• Planning: based on insufficient data, not everything is taken into account, not enough details, erroneous calculations.
• Risks: Unidentified or invented, lack of control.

The Standish group is confident that with the most important factors success or failure of the project are, in order of importance:

• Customer involvement.
• Top management support.
• Experienced project manager.

According to the studies of both foreign and domestic experts, most of the obstacles to fix a failing project, this is :

• Convincing owners to accept the changes necessary to bring the project to a successful conclusion, regardless of changes in scale, budget, resources, etc .;
• poor communication and owner involvement, lack of clarity and trust;
• conflicting policies and priorities;
• the problem of finding enough qualified resources to complete the project;
• lack of methodology or processes to get the project back on track.

During the research, many factors were identified that affect the success in correcting the situation with the project, but the most important is the project manager, who is the most important member of the team who can influence the result, reducing risks or getting rid of them altogether. Usually it is the project manager who is responsible for rescuing the problematic project.

Other factors in successfully completing a problem project included the existence of a standard methodology for running or rescuing a problem project, the size of the firm, and the industry in which it does business.

The key to saving a problematic project is effort. Once the firm decides to channel its energy into solving the problems that put the project at risk, the chances of its successful completion increase.

The decision to rescue a project is made by: top management (in 50% of companies), sponsor (16%), department head (16%) or project manager (13%). In smaller firms, the sponsor (24%) or project manager (24%) has much more power to vote to save the project. Less often, this decision is made by the head of the department (5%).

Generalization of practical experience in project management shows that most often steps to save the project , this is :

• modernization of communication and management (62%);
• revision of project objectives - reduction of its scope, revision of funding (60%);
• adding or removing resources (58%);
• solving technical problems (49%);
• replacement of a project manager or hiring a consultant (36%).

Firms that do not have a methodology are more likely to choose to replace the project manager than those that have mastered the methodology (22% and 9%, respectively). They are also more likely to use outside consultants to bail out the project (26% versus 11%).

Usually, rescue operations on a problematic project are quite successful. Almost three quarters of problem projects (74%) have been successfully completed in the end, 18% are still in the process, so the final results are not known. Only 4% are really flopped, and 3% are closed for business reasons.

There are two essential factors for the successful implementation of the project. First of them is rather technical side of project management... It deals mainly with planning and cost estimation, project management and control, risk management, quality management, project documentation and results evaluation. The second factor is an managerial competence of the project manager.

Companies that do not have a standard project methodology do not always value these skills than those that have such a methodology (78% of the former spoke about the importance of project manager qualifications and 96% - the latter).

Almost all responding organizations (92%) indicated that the skills of the project manager are very important(64%) or simply important (28%) for the success of the rescue operation of the problem project.

It is important that the responsibility for the implementation of the project at all stages of management (planning, implementation, control, analysis, changes) is borne by one person - project manager. This will focus the area of ​​responsibility and improve the efficiency of the decision-making process.

Successful project implementation depends not only from project managers and superiors, but also from many other members of the project team. Their actions should also be regulated, motivated and aimed at obtaining not only timely, but also high-quality results.

An important component is holistic role-based concept of management of each individual project and the entire portfolio... Roles, their place in the organizational structure, rights and responsibilities, qualification requirements should be defined. An example of project roles might be: Project Manager, Project Assistant, Development Specialist, Construction Manager, Construction Specialist, Construction Coordinator, Design Specialist, Estimator, etc.

Yet one criterion of success on a project- this is the ability to choose the "main point of application of efforts", the ability to focus on priority tasks, the solution of which leads to significant progress towards the goal.

The goals of the project are achieved by action. The project manager is obliged to constantly monitor the implementation of the project stages on time and the consumption of resources. Wasted time cannot always be made up, even by increasing resources.

It is surprising that even the most skillfully planned project can reach a point where it is difficult to determine how things are going. But this is exactly what you need to know in order to direct efforts towards the goal. Without one or another monitoring system - tracking the progress of work - it is impossible to be sure that the manager "keeps his finger on the pulse" of the project.

Timely and accurate action is at the core of the success of any project. , the foundation of which is organizational discipline - the ability to act “here and now”. The experience of project activities shows that adherence to discipline and commitment of all project participants increases the chance of success by an order of magnitude.

Among the others success factors of project management should be called:

• introduction of an experienced project manager and delegation of sufficient rights to him to make the necessary changes;
• attraction of additional, qualified resources;
• increase in the budget;
• open communication, defining expectations and assigning responsibilities among decision makers;
• redevelopment of the project.

Interviewing experienced project managers to find out if what is the most important component of a project's success, showed that it is its implementation... More often than not, projects are stalled by default than by any mistakes in planning or resource assignment.

It all starts at the top. Management must be aware of the cost and scope of the project. It is not enough to approve the estimate of the project. For the success of the project, all its participants must know that the management fully supports this event, the project has the highest priority, and its success is directly related to the future of the enterprise.

Leadership, due to its position, can have an important positive influence on the process of thinking about the use of resources in a project. It can help you make sure, even before starting a project, how smart resource planning is. May insist on developing additional scenarios to catch up with what's possible and what's not.

Without the formation of a certain culture of project execution, the project manager is powerless to influence his progress towards the goal. Target dates are set, then skipped - the project schedule becomes a wish rather than an action plan. At the same time, everyone loses, but most of all - the company. The obligations of the executors should be aligned with the corresponding obligations of the management.

The manager cannot move forward without real coordinated actions of the project team. Depending on the scope of the project, this agreement can be replaced by assigning work to the project participants. In many cases, the project team consists of employees from all departments of the company. If team members do not pay enough attention to the work on the project, considering this work less important than their day-to-day responsibilities, the project will drift, and imperceptibly, but naturally, it will come to disaster.

If the obligations are met, then the project moves forward. But, in order for everything to happen on time, it is necessary to prepare a project schedule. A work plan is a timetable that serves as a realistic model of the expected behavior of a project. .

For project managers, the term “schedule” has a very specific meaning. From their point of view, a project schedule is not such if it does not contain a detailed analysis of all the activities required to complete the project; realistic estimates of the time required for each activity; and, finally, well-thought-out relationships between different types of work.

Although project management uses terms such as start-finish, the terminology is nowhere near as important as the content: how the work relates to each other (what the technology is).

Obviously, researching the time / cost curve before the project starts allows the company to make the right decision when approving the project schedule.

Together, these elements provide an answer to the question: what needs to be done and by what date? Equally important is the question of how, what resources - people, equipment, structures, etc. - are required for each job? Will they be available when needed? How can resource conflicts be resolved?
If the project manager knows the plan's actual resource requirements and how to deal with resource shortages, then the project planning part is complete.

Project planning requires the ability to determine how long it will take to complete a task, especially if it involves creative or intellectual activities, regardless of the amount of resources required for it. Unfortunately, the miscalculations of the project duration during the initial planning are often taken too calmly, mistakenly assuming that everything will be completed on time, and the wasted time can always be made up by reallocating resources.

The schedule of some projects is based on the theory that you can endlessly increase the number of people and reduce the work time to achieve the desired results. In some situations, increasing the amount of resources helps. Sometimes not. Sometimes it does more harm than good.

Frederick P. Brooks, Chief Development Project Manager operating system IBM 360 believes that in most cases, man-month scheduling is a myth. If the development project does not meet the deadline, increasing the number of resources actually lengthens the project duration - due to training additional employees, tracking their work and communication problems. This is tantamount to, according to Brooks, using gasoline to put out a fire.

When working with a project behind schedule the best option- this is a change in the timing or scale of the project. The worst thing is to insist on making up for lost time. It's easy to be persuaded that some jobs can be accelerated without compromising quality. On paper, the quality remains. In reality, the requirements are simply reduced.

A report by management consulting firm McKinsey published in Fortune magazine estimates that some projects completed on time but over budget are 140% more profitable than if they were on budget but were late. six months .

As a conclusion summarizing the above, one should cite the data obtained by the Institute of St. Gallen and the International Institute for Training Organizations and Innovation in Munich after conducting research on the reasons for the success and failure of projects, and reflecting project success criteria :

1. General readiness for change... Successful organizations are dominated by a philosophy based on the following principles: "live and learn", "the one who does nothing is not mistaken", "there is no such problem that we could not cope with."
2. Conflict culture... In successful projects, conflicts are dealt with constructively and openly. Free exchange of information and opinions, as well as openness to criticism, prevail.
3. Personal responsibility of the project staff... The success of projects is directly related to the degree of personal responsibility of the project staff and the possibility of self-organization. The more powers each individual has, the sooner he is ready to take responsibility, and the more is his personal initiative and motivation. Small powers, on the other hand, promote passivity and even resistance.
4. A culture of trust... A humanely pleasant climate of openness, sincerity and honesty in communication with each other increases the likelihood of project success. With a culture of trust, there is less error-making and decisions are made by everyone and then implemented.
5. Lack of hierarchy... Projects were especially successful then when the work on the project took place in a team, where the hierarchy does not play a role in the organization of the project, or at least is minimized. A rigid hierarchy blocked creativity and motivation of project staff in unsuccessful projects.
6. Communication and information culture. The projects were especially successful when the atmosphere of intensive exchange of information and open communication reigned in the team, i.e. high degree of publicity. Good communication in this regard means good cooperation, and vice versa. Intensive communication between different functional areas leads to the fact that mutual understanding grows, and employees can look beyond the "plate" of their own sphere, which leads to better decisions.

Thus, the generalization of the experience of project management has shown that the competitiveness of the project should be constantly increased, achieving the maximum correspondence of its consumer and cost characteristics to the existing and potential needs of the customer. Implementation competitive advantage relies on the essence of value, which is the source of gaining an advantage (material, intangible, monetary, social and other values), and depends on its content, source of origin, dynamism of manifestation, scale of distribution and other conditions.

What is a successful project?

On June 8, within the framework of the 3rd International Week of Project Management, organized by Spider Ukraine Management Technologies, a seminar "Project Success - Criteria, Management, Corporate Culture" was held.

The simple question "when is a project to be considered successful" can often be answered with an obvious answer. A project is successful when the objectives of the project are met and at the same time it is completed on time and within budget. However, it is not always possible to give a simple answer to a simple question. In any case, at many events where the topic of project management is discussed to one degree or another, there are sometimes heated discussions about what should be considered a successful project. At a seminar organized by Spider Ukraine Management Technologies, Honorary President of the Moscow PMI Branch, general manager Spider Management Technologies (Moscow) Vladimir Liberson presented his point of view on this topic.

Project types

According to V. Liberson, first of all, it is necessary to take into account the fact that projects may have different goals and criteria for success. From this point of view, all projects should be divided into three types.

What was presented at the seminar was very relevant, because during the seminar the listeners asked a lot of questions (asked for advice) - "according to the painful" from their practice. "Debriefing" of real situations of the listeners added a lot of specifics. This allowed those who came to the seminar, along with deep theoretical material, to receive and practical advice how to make a project successful.

- Boris Zhdanov, editor-in-chief of the "Corporate Systems" magazine

Project success criteria- a set of indicators that make it possible to judge the degree of success of the project.

Success criteria for project management- indicators of project management efficiency.

Success of the project, as a rule, it means that all stakeholders get results that meet their expectations, traditionally formulated in the form of goals and requirements. If such goals and requirements are formulated, the criteria for the success of the project can be quantitative indicators reflecting the degree of achievement of the goals of the project or the fulfillment of certain requirements.

A clear and unambiguous definition of these criteria is a mandatory task at the initial stage of a project launch. The project manager should identify and agree on the success rates and how they will be measured with all project stakeholders.

The general criterion for the success of a project is the achievement of the project objectives at the planned time and within the planned resources.

The main requirement for the criteria is their unambiguous and clear definition. For each project and each customer, success criteria must be defined, evaluated and analyzed.

Failure to achieve the goals set at the beginning of the project does not always mean a failure in the implementation of the project. However, if the parties' views on the goals and objectives of the project change during the course of the project, these changes should be reflected in the corresponding criteria for success.

Success in project management is related to project success, but they are not the same thing. It is possible to successfully manage a project that will subsequently be terminated due to loss of relevance, for example, due to a change in company strategy. If the success of a project is usually associated with the achievement of the expected business result, then the success of project management is usually associated with such criteria as adherence to time limits and cost of the project, timeliness of deliveries, quality of communications, response time to emerging risks and problems, etc.

If, due to ongoing changes, the project loses its relevance, it is necessary to consider options for making changes to the concept or make a decision to close this project.

Defining success criterion the project is relevance of the result at the time of its achievement.

At the very beginning of the project, it is highly advisable to analyze the reasons for possible project failures (potential risk areas).

The main reasons for project failure can be:

Unclear goals;

Insufficient funding;

Changing business priorities;

Lack of support from senior management;

Ineffective team (qualifications of project personnel);

Insufficiently effective interaction in the project;

Lack of self-government;

Insufficiently effective communication;

Lack of motivation (refers to internal risks);

It is necessary to test the project for "reasons for possible failures": are the objectives of the project clear enough? How reliable are investors? Is the project team qualified? Is her motivation enough?

Success criteria and failure criteria are interrelated. But over time, they can change, in particular as the market situation changes.

To be continued...

Today I want to briefly tell you about the criteria for the success of projects and project managers.

But first you have to answer the question “what is a project” :)

What is a project

This is the first question any manager needs to answer.

Not obvious, but project management more difficult than “normal”, so-called “regular management”. Managing a department or subordinates is one thing. Leading a project is another matter entirely.

Most project management methodologies are voluminous. For example, the latest edition of the “bible of managers” PMBoK is almost 1000 pages, the manuals of Prince2, IPMA and others (about them - some other time) are also not small.

In the life of a leader, it is important to learn to quickly understand “the project is in front of you or not” so as not to waste energy (and attempts to pull 1,000-page methodologies where you can get by with a little blood).

One of the first discoveries to be made is that top management itself, as a rule, does not understand well where projects are and where not. Those. There is no need to hope that you have been entrusted with something, called it a project and have already thought well. In practice, projects are called anything, it is you (the project manager) who needs to check what has been said for adequacy.

We need a definition that will help sort the assigned tasks into those that require project approach and those that (fortunately) can be solved more easily by applying "regular management" more familiar to most people.

Definition of the term

Let's remember or google a more or less classic definition. We come across something like: "A project is an event to achieve a goal, limited resources in time and associated with the achievement of a unique result."

Such wording is common. Including in PMBoK itself. Problem: They're unfortunate. Of these, the main thing is not clear - how a project differs from a “non-project”.

Don't believe me? Try to find at least one example of any activity that does not fit this definition?

Explaining with an example

You go to work or make yourself scrambled eggs for breakfast in the morning.

Are these activities to achieve the goal? Of course, the goal is quite specific (arrive at your destination, get enough).

Time limited? Undoubtedly! You cannot have breakfast for half a day or spend a day on the road.

Are resources limited? Again, yes. You have an understandable amount that you can and do not mind spending on the road. Or in the case of scrambled eggs, just a dozen eggs in the refrigerator. If you use them up, you will be left without breakfast.

Should such work be called a project? Of course not! What are there 1000 pages of methodologies to fry eggs. You can cope with one intuition and common sense.

If you were not cooking fried eggs alone, but with your family, passing a frying pan to each other, then cooking breakfast would still not turn into a project, intuition would still be enough.

About the pathos of coaches

Many project management coaches love pathos and tend to exaggerate. Sometimes they say “everything in the world is a project”. Or “project management is a very ancient skill, the first projects are thousands of years old - here, the Egyptian pyramids ...”.

I dare to say - the construction of the Egyptian pyramid by the ancient Egyptians was not just a project, as was the preparation of scrambled eggs. There are (fortunately) much less projects around us than it seems. And in the normal, modern sense of the word, full-fledged project management was formed about 50-70 years ago (hardly more).

However, back to the scrambled eggs.

Now imagine that you have a more difficult task ahead of you. Making more than just scrambled eggs for breakfast for yourself (or your family). Some event is coming (child's birthday). You want to make a surprise - take the ostrich egg scrambled eggs.

The rates are skyrocketing. There are still time limits (for example, the birthday is coming soon). There is only one egg, you bought it from an ostrich farm. You know very little about ostriches and are not sure if it will be possible to roast it properly. It is not even clear whether it will fit in a normal frying pan and whether the shell will break correctly. You really don't want to make a mistake and spoil the surprise for your child.

And in such a situation, your activity begins to more and more resemble a project. You start planning more carefully (compared to your usual breakfast) - surfing the Internet, figuring out “how to fry”, “how to break”, select a special frying pan (or even buy a suitable one in the store, calculate the time. Not necessarily all 1000 pages of PMBoK will be used in this approach, but there are many elements that you would not even think of using for a regular breakfast or a trip to the office, you will apply here.

What changed

Let me offer my definition.

We call a project a work on a task, which is inherent at the same time:

• limb,
• high uncertainty.

Finiteness is a "framework", a limitation in terms and resources.

High uncertainty means that it is not clear how to solve the task at hand. Only when BOTH conditions are met - apply project management.

Think of the major industries and industries where project management is prevalent: for example, IT or applied science. When a development and implementation project is launched software product or to launch a new pharma on the market. drug - they usually have a frame. The company has a certain budget and can afford to invest in development for a certain period of time. But then the money must come back. At the same time, the task to be solved by software engineers, technologists and scientists often does not have an understandable algorithm, it is poorly predictable, and many risks can work (we have to partly adopt the principle of “get into battle, we'll see there”).

It is at this juncture that approaches from regular management work very poorly. When there are both very rigid frameworks (finiteness) and high uncertainty at the same time.

This is why (in my opinion) construction Egyptian pyramids by the ancient Egyptians - not a project. At least one of the parameters is missing. And this is the finiteness.

The construction of the Egyptian pyramids is not a project

The construction of the pyramid began when the pharaoh was born. It had to be finished by the time of his death. If there was no death in infancy, then, most likely, the construction took at least 20-30 years. Resources (people, materials) were also not in short supply. Opinions differ - whether the pyramid was built by slaves or free mercenaries, but, in any case, the principle worked - “did something go wrong? Let's bring in more people. ” If you have unlimited time frames and / or budgets, then sooner or later you will cope with any task. Even with a very complex one. And very incomprehensible to you. From the fifth, tenth or twentieth time, after huge expenses, you will succeed.

An example of the "Egyptian pyramids" in modern world- some state projects. Or the work of some product companies (more often in the IT field). When a company has made a certain IT product and then for years refines and improves it, selling more and more new customers, expanding the number of services. Until such a company reaches a new level of development, but it is already very rich - it does not need project management (imagine Google or Facebook). Now these are giant corporations engaged in a variety of projects from creating cars and satellites to medical and financial startups. But once they had 1 very successful product (search engine or social network), and could set its development as their only task (on which they could spend at least an unlimited amount of money). Such a Google and such a Facebook would not need project management.

Operational activity is what

Sometimes the so-called "operational activities" are mentioned. This is the most obvious example one can imagine when project management is not required at all.

Operations are characterized by a violation of both principles: (infinity) and (absence) uncertainty.

An example is the work of a car assembly plant. The plant where the conveyor is running. Cars move along it. Someone is engaged in painting the body, installing wheels, headlights, seats, and so on. This activity is conditionally endless (it will be repeated from day to day until the plant is closed or the production of this brand of cars is curtailed). It is extremely predictable (it is well known how many cars can be produced per shift, what will be the “exhaust” at the end of the day, week, month, year). The application of the principles of project management in such conditions will not provide any benefit (it will only complicate and confuse everything).

Another example of operational activity is work technical support in the IT field. The call center or site accepts applications, they are distributed according to a certain algorithm among the employees, who either give oral recommendations to the user, or eliminate minor defects. This kind of work reminds us of an assembly line: small, most often the same type of input requests, a predictable algorithm for processing them. At least until it comes to large-scale restructuring of the system. In such conditions, project management is also useless.

However, when you are faced simultaneously with a task that has high uncertainty and finiteness (scope), project management is the best (with some reservations) way to solve it today.

Project success criteria

When talking about defining a project, it is important to mention the criteria for success. What is a “successful manager”? What is a “successful project”? And what is considered a failure?

The answer has long been worked out by methodologists.

A successful project is one that met a predetermined deadline, cost (and other resources), provided the customer with what he asked for, and at the same time the key stakeholders are satisfied.

It sounds cumbersome, but easily conveyed in one picture. Imagine a triangle (they have stopped drawing it in PMBoK for some time now, but the essence has not gone anywhere). The triangle has three sides = time, money, content. In the center is a smiling emoticon. Everything.

These are the criteria for your successful project.

Edge - what is agreed with the customer before the start of the project. Usually - such agreements are high-level, in general terms, but they are also inviolable. Have you promised to build a 9-storey brick house within 12 months and with a budget of $ 1 million? Do it!

What will this house be like, how the balconies will look like, which company's elevators to install in it - the second question. This has yet to be agreed upon, possibly during the course of the project. But framework agreements - right away. Before the launch of the project. Usually they are recorded in a hyper-laconic document called “project charter” (about it some other time).

So, the three facets of the project you must define BEFORE you start working. Terms (“we will finish no later than”), money (“the project budget is not more than ...”) and content in 2-3 sentences (“what we do and what we don’t do”). These faces are symbolized by the triangle in the picture.

They need to be achieved so that the key (not all, but key) stakeholders of the project (key users and representatives of the customer, your management, key regulators and some others) are satisfied. This satisfaction is symbolized by a smiley face inside the triangle.

How to Become a Good Manager

A good project manager differs from a bad project manager in that it falls into a triangle at completion and makes key stakeholders happy.

All methodologies, by and large, are focused on how to form a triangle at the start of the project with sufficient accuracy and what to do along the way when deviations arise (missed estimates, new requirements appeared, customer representative changed, etc.).

The manager is not successful if he does not know how to keep the project in the triangle (which he himself agreed upon at the start). Or if his projects are completed “on budget and on time and strictly according to the technical specification”, but the customer remains deeply unhappy and disappointed (smiley face in a triangle with the corners of his lips down). Another example of failure: the project is completed within the originally designated triangle, the customer is satisfied, but the team overextended itself - people in it are demotivated, many, having received a project bonus, filed a resignation letter. The internal reputation of the company is spoiled, it is difficult and expensive to look for new specialists in the labor market. In this case, the top management of the company will probably be unhappy. And these are also the key stakeholders (after all, the project was done with their money - they were the ones who paid your salary as a manager and all staff members).

Project management is a balancing act: how to define and not fail the triangle (time-money-content) and achieve the satisfaction of the key stakeholders of the project. This is the key thing to remember about the criteria for project success.

The article was written based on the project management training course.

As mentioned above, each project should have predetermined goals.

Project goals are the most important element of project management, on which, in the end, the success of the project largely depends.

Let's give the following example. A large company begins to implement an information management system for interaction with counterparties. The management of the company declares for the project team and the future contractor to perform the work, the goals:

· To increase the efficiency of interaction with contractors;

· To increase the client base of the company;

· Increase the number of positive consumer reviews and reduce the number of complaints.

The project team is implementing the project within budget, but with a two-month delay. At the end of the project, the information system is not used by users, the company management recognizes the project as unsuccessful and dismisses the project manager. It should be noted that in many ways the reason for this failure lies in the incorrect setting of the project's goals.

First, the goals are not specific. The client base could be increased by 20 counterparties, which, of course, is very small, but, nevertheless, ensures the fulfillment of the set goal “Increase the company's client base”. The situation is similar with the number of consumer reviews. In addition, the achievement of these goals can be assessed only after users of the information system begin to work in it and enter the relevant data after a period of time.

Secondly, as it turned out by the end of the project, the main goal that the project team did not take into account was the completion of the project by December 31, since by that date the company's management had to report to the governing board on the implementation of the goal. Since it was impossible to report on the results, the activities of the leaders were recognized as unsuccessful in general.

Thirdly, for the purposes of the project and during the work, the interests and desires of the company's employees - the end users of the information system - were not taken into account, which led to sabotage of the use of the system.

Thus, careless goal setting often leads to project failure.

The goals of the project must meet the requirements of SMART (Specific - Specialized, Mesurable - Measurable, Actively Influencible - Relevant, Realistic - Realistic, Time Limited - Limited in time).

For the given example, it was necessary to define goals:

After the completion of the project, 90% of employees use information system;

· The system contains up-to-date data;

· To increase the client base of the company by 20% within six months of using the system;

· Increase the number of positive customer reviews by 10% and reduce the number of complaints by 10% for six months of using the system.

These goals are SMART-compliant and enable the project team and company management to track project success metrics objectively.

To assess the fulfillment of the goals of the project, criteria for the success of the project are introduced. The project is successful if it:

· Completed on time;

· Within the allocated budget;

· Upon customer satisfaction.

Project life cycle

Each project, regardless of its complexity and the amount of work required for its implementation, goes through certain states in its development: from the state when “the project is not yet” to the state when “the project is no longer there”.

The beginning of the project is associated with the beginning of its implementation and the beginning of investment Money in its execution.

The end of the project can be:

· Commissioning of objects, project results, the beginning of their operation and use of the results of the project;

· Transfer of the personnel performing the project to another job;

· Achievement of the specified results by the project;

· Termination of project financing;

· Commencement of work on introducing major changes to the project that were not provided for by the original concept (modernization);

· Withdrawal of objects, project results from operation.

Usually, both the fact of the start of work on a project and the fact of its liquidation are formalized in official documents.

The states through which the project passes are called phases (stages, stages).

There is no universal approach to dividing the process of project implementation into phases. Solving such a task for themselves, the project participants should be guided by their role in the project, their experience and the specific conditions of the project. Therefore, in practice, the division of the project into phases can be very diverse - the main thing is that such a division identifies some important control points ("milestones"), during the passage of which one can see Additional Information and the possible directions of the project development are assessed.

Each phase must end with a measurable, verifiable result. At the end of each phase, a decision is made to initiate a new phase or close (conservation) the project.

In turn, each selected phase (stage) can be divided into phases (stages) of the next level (subphases, substages), etc.

An example of the project life cycle is shown in Fig. 1.3.

Reflected:

· Project phases;

· Milestones at the beginning and end of each phase;

· Results of each phase.

The identification of many stages in large projects is associated not only with the long duration of the construction of these facilities (10-15 years), but also with the need for a more thorough coordination of the actions of the organizations participating in the project.

Consider the change in the characteristics of a project during the life cycle.

That increases in the course of the project and decreases sharply towards the completion of fig. 1.4
):

· The level of costs;

· The level of workload of personnel.

What increases in the course of the project (Fig. 1.5
):

· The likelihood of successful completion of the project;

· Cost of changes;

· The cost of correcting errors.

What decreases during the project (Fig. 1.6
):

· Uncertainty / risks of the project;

· The ability of participants to influence the final characteristics of the project product;

· The ability of participants to influence the cost of the project's product.

There is a relationship between the project life cycle and the product life cycle.

The product life cycle consists of phases that are tracked for the production and control needs of the company. Basically, a project life cycle consists of one or more product life cycles.

If the outcome of a project is related to a product, there may be many kinds of relationships between life cycles... For example, developing a new product can itself be a project. Alternatively, you can give an example where a project is being implemented to improve the performance of an existing product.