A Successful Project

The success or fail definitions for each project are varies based on individual perception. Some companies define its own project as "trouble project" or "failed project" as it is delay and goes over budget where the project team members or the users look at the project as "challenge" or some even look at it as "successful" as they get to use it and find it is very useful for their daily operations. Or the other way around, companies view project as "successful" but team members or the users think project is "failed".

This depends which aspects we use to measure the success; by cost, times, quality, usefulness, customer satisfaction or the combination of all. According to PMBOK Guide project management is "The art of directing and co-coordinating human and material resources throughout the life of a project by using modern management techniques to achieve predetermined objectives of scope, cost, time and quality and ensuring participant satisfaction". Therefore, perhaps the best answer for what is called a successful project is a project that can achieve predetermined objectives of scope, cost, time and quality and ensuring participant satisfaction. Though there are many define set of skills, knowledge areas, methodologies, etc. to consider, I think to make project successful, project manager should have ability to manage and balance these elements: scope, cost, time, quality and customer satisfaction. However, the first element, scope, is what I consider as the most important fundamental for a successful project management.

The project scope is the definition of what the project is supposed to accomplish and the budget (of time and money) that has been created to achieve these objectives. Any change to the scope of the project have an impact in budget, either time or resources. If the project scope is to implement a customer management system with a budget of 15 millions Baht, the project manager is expected to do that. Usually, scope changes occur in the form of "scope creep"-- a change in project scope after the project is already started. To ensure the success of the project, project manager should not overlook on the changes even though some changes are seem to be minor and have not much impact to project budgeted resources. A piling up of small changes that by themselves are manageable, but in aggregate can be significant. Therefore, project manager need to make sure any change requests, no matter how small, is accompanied by approval for a change in budget or schedule or both. It is not a rule of thumb that the scope cannot be changed. If project team all agree that the requirements are necessary to be changed then project manager must apply an appropriate change management to control the project. However, if the scope is necessary to be changed the project manager should use the judgment and balance among scope, cost, time, quality and customer

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