Project Management Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence, 4th Edition

16 Value-Driven Project Management

16.0 INTRODUCTION

Over the years, we have come to accept the traditional definition of project success, namely meeting the triple constraints of time, cost, and scope. More recently, we modified our definition of success by stating that there must be a valid business purpose for working on the project. Success was then recognized as having both a business component and a technical component as well as meeting strategic business objectives.

Today, we are modifying the definition of success further by adding in a “value” component, as seen in Figure 16-1. In other words, the ultimate purpose of working on the project should be to provide some form of value to both the client and the parent organization. If the project’s value cannot be identified, then perhaps we should not be working on the project at all.

Figure 16-1. .Definition of success.

Value can be defined as what the stakeholders perceive the project’s deliverables as being worth. Each stakeholder can have a different definition of value. Furthermore, the actual value may be expressed in qualitative terms rather than purely quantitative terms. It simply may not be possible to quantify the actual value.

The importance of the value component cannot be overstated. Consider the following statements:

• Completing a project on time and within budget does not guarantee success if you were ...