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We seem to hear a lot about ‘success’ and ‘failure’ of projects and Project Management. I find this to be a very interesting subject, as it relates to the effectiveness of project management training.

I recently received a summary of the Standish Group’s report, “CHAOS Summary 2009″. Here’s what they say:

This year’s results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects succeeding, 44% were challenged (late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions) and 24% failed (canceled prior to completion or delivery and never used)

Standish defines ‘success’ like this:

Projects success means delivering on time, on budget, with required features and functions

But is this really a full definition of ‘success’? An interesting study by Dr. J. Rodney Turner and Ralf Muller in their book “Choosing Appropriate Project Managers” has a much more detailed definition of success:

• Meeting the project’s overall performance (functionality, budget, and timing)
• Meeting user requirements
• Meeting the project’s purpose
• Client satisfaction with the project results
• Re-occurring business with the client
• End-user satisfaction with the project’s product or service
• Supplier’s satisfaction
• Project team’s satisfaction
• Other stakeholder’s satisfaction
• Meeting the respondent’s self-defined success factor

If we use this broader definition of ‘success’, then there are many implications for us as project managers. For example, are you measuring end-user satisfaction? Or supplier satisfaction? Did you even bother to ask other stakeholders about their definition of success?

Experienced Project managers use Project Stakeholder Management to better understand the success criteria of all project stakeholders, and this enables them to take action to make their projects successful, beyond the simple time/cost/scope definitions that we normally use.