Measuring Project Success

We probably have in general more than 50 projects going on simultaneously. This is a lot of projects. They start, they end, we move on.

How do we know that we have succeeded?

It ultimately comes down to one or two factors, these two questions are asked in our customer satisfaction survey sent out at the end of every projects:

• Would you do business with us again?
• Would you recommend us?

Getting yeses on these two is THE indicator that you have succeeded. Obviously the fact that our customers believe that we have met or even surpassed their expectations does not mean we have built the right product - which is something we greatly care about - but at least we have built what they were asking for.

When our customer are telling us that they would do business with us again and/or that they would recommend us we are happy.

I was reading this article about Measuring the success of a project and although the suggested metrics make sense, they neglected to consider the fundamental questions above and focused on secondary aspects (schedule, scope, budget, market acceptance, customer sat in terms of # of complaints).

In a service company, getting repeat business is what makes you successful even though you could not respect the schedule at 100% or meet the budgetary expectations.

Getting repeat business especially after though times implies trust and this is a warm feeling.