Performance-Based Project Management

CHAPTER 2

The Five Immutable Principles of Project Success

Project failure starts when we can’t tell what “done” looks like in any meaningful way. Without some agreement on our vision of “done”, we’ll never recognize it when it arrives, except when we’ve run out of time or money or both.

We’ve all seen the project failure numbers before.¹ We’ve all been told how bad things are. We’ve all heard that large numbers of projects fail because of poor planning or poor project management. Whether this is true or not, how can we increase the probability of our own project’s success?

First, we must recognize that without a clear and concise description of done, the only measures of progress are the passage of time, consumption of resources, and production ...