Project Management Success Requires Value
Project failure: It can be on-time, within budget, and meet the specs and still fail. That seems to be the case with the new Dallas 160x72 foot megascreen. It seems that the screen displays what it should, but is positioned a bit too low. So low that the punters kicked a ball into it. Did someone forget that people would be playing football in the stadium?
Projects are successful if they are delivered within budget, on-time with all the functionality originally requested, right? Not necessarily! For a project to be a successful, it must provide value to both the customer and the supplier. How can a project be a failure if it takes 15% more time or money to make a useful and valuable product?
"Late and over budget" is not necessarily a designation of failure or even challenged. "Less than the required features and functions," might mean failure, given these features would have provided value. Delivering features and functions that do not provide value is a waste of time and money. Removing non-value-add may bring the project back to its budgeted parameters. Little or no value in the delivered product is a real problem.
It is critical that all parties have some value that justifies the project, otherwise the project is doomed. One party failing to achieve the needed value will continue to pull the project in a direction to gain more value, inevitably lowering the value of the other party. For instance, for a product with improper scope the customer will push for different features lowering the profit of the supplier. The supplier with too little margin will cut corners on scope or quality to reduce their cost and chew into the customer's value. It becomes an adversarial spiral toward failure.
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