Success Criteria for Your Projects

By Lenka Davis

Break things down

One of my favorite books is Bird by Bird written by the funny and talented novelist Anne Lamott. It’s about writing and how to get things done. It is the title, however, that I love, because it refers to the process of breaking things down into smaller tasks. Her father gave this advice to her older brother when her older brother had three months to write a report on birds, but had waited until the night before to start the report.

Make a list

Break tasks down into small manageable bites. You can make the list going forwards or backwards, so either start with what you want to do in the end and work backwards on what needs to be done to get there. Or you can start at the beginning and see how many steps you can list that need to be done.

Define your success with success criteria

Having success criteria helps eliminate stress, scope creep, sets expectations on the schedule, achieves customer satisfaction and produces a quality output. 

There is a difference between project success criteria vs project management success criteria.

Project management is about being efficient and making sure that in the end you have delivered against the objectives.

Project success criteria is related to the deliverables associated with the project. In this case you have a product or service completed to the customer's satisfaction.

Project Management Success Criteria

Success criteria for project management is measured by the following, as defined by project manager.com:

Scope: Achieving the intended results of the project.

Schedule: Meeting the deadline, including all milestones.

Budget: Delivering the project for the amount agreed upon.

Team Satisfaction: Making sure the team feels satisfied with the project.

Customer Satisfaction: Get positive feedback from clients, sponsors, stakeholders, et al.

Quality: Achieve expectations of stakeholders.

Success criteria for project success is measured by people, time and money. Often this is called the resource triangle. These are resources that are often limited, either one or two or maybe even all three of them. The tricky part is to decide where to put more or less limits.

Project Success Criteria

People/Scope

Does your current team have enough resources and knowledge to finish the project? Does your project scope align with the time you have or the budget you have set up to finish the project?

Time

Do you have a time constraint either based on something needing to be done by a conference or launch deadline? Or is the price of a project not being completed costing you money because you have to pay storage or double rental fees, for example, like in an office remodel? In these examples you can lengthen or shorten the amount of time something will take. If you have lots of time, which startups normally don’t, then that can reduce the need for people or money needed to complete the project.

Money

Do you have lots of funding to put towards the project to get it done quickly, or is your budget limited so you need to get creative or remove some scope?

I once had a product manager ask me which one we were going to have to toggle to complete the deliverables. Hiring people or taking them away from other projects was not a possibility, but changing the scope or adding a few hours of some people was. Adding more budget was not to fill the original scope. And, our timeline was slightly flexible but not enough to get the current scope done. 

So sometimes getting to the finish line takes editing two or all three of the resources.

And, if you need motivation and a good book, then Bird by Bird is a good solution.

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