Weightings of performance against the success criteria

In any discussion on success, it is necessary that a distinction is made amid project success and the success of the project management effort, keeping in mind that good project management can contribute towards project success but is unlikely to be able to prevent failure. The most appropriate criteria for victory are the project objectives. The extent to which these objectives have been met determines the success or failure of a project. The criterion for success of the project management effort tends to be restricted to cost, time and quality/performance. When scaling the project success, one must consider the objectives of all stakeholders throughout the project life cycle and at all levels in the management hierarchy. Consequently, considering that, with such huge number of objectives, measuring the success of a project is little tedious.

The weighting system

As you think about multiple factors to establish project success, the final area you need to address is a weighting system. This will be essential because not all of the performance factors are of equal importance.

For example, completing a project by a certain date may be more important in a project than hitting the budget target or not. In fact, one may have to overspend to make sure the deadline is hit. So, in such projects, meeting the deadline should be weighted more profoundly than meeting the budget target.

The way one establishes an overall weighting formula is to begin with a maximum point total and divide the achievement of that maximum total into the number of success criterion. The accomplishment of all the success criteria results in a 100-point maximum. In other words, if the project team did everything flawlessly, its total score would be 100 points. We can also spell out that the five criteria of success are deadline, budget, quality, client satisfaction, and sponsor rating of success