Performance-Based Project Management

INTRODUCTION

Project success is an elusive goal in every business or technical domain. Examples of project failure are easy to find. Examples of project success are not as well documented. We tend to focus on the failures rather than the successes. It is difficult to look for the root causes of project failure; instead, we tend to write about the magnitude of the failure and how things went wrong. Corrective actions are rarely discussed based on an assessment of the root causes, because the project participants have usually moved on. When we do look in greater detail, the literature shows the primary root causes of failure start with a failure to define what “done” looks like in any meaningful units of measure. Without a measurable assessment ...