Guide to Project Management: Getting it right and achieving lasting benefit, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6

Planning: quality

A PLAN IS A FORECAST. Many people think that a project forecast is expressed in terms of a completion date and a total budget, but neither can be predicted adequately until what the project has to deliver is known. Thus a forecast is better described as a probability assessment based on skill and experience of the time and resources required for the successful delivery of a specified end product.

The specified end product will not be produced by chance. It must be defined, planned, built, tested and accepted before it can be used for its intended purpose. This means that a successful outcome will mean different things to different people. The sponsor may consider as successful a project that delivers a low-cost, high-income-generating solution, whereas customers may expect it to provide something that works and is robust and reliable. For the developers, a successful project must deliver an outcome that is supportable since it may have to be maintained and managed over a long period.

When a project has been completed questions will be asked about its success. Posing them at the beginning of the project forces participants to identify success criteria, which might be:

• Does the new computer system process twice as many trades per day as the previous one?
• Does the new office provide each of the 350 staff with at least 36 square feet of desk space?
• Were all new staff recruited by the end of June?
• Have the new facilities been secured within their quoted ...