To avoid exceeding your time frame, you need to plan for buffer times
Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 8:42 am
If you ask five people what they think constitutes a project failure, you'll probably get five different answers. Project failure is subjective and depends on the criteria for project success and the metrics used to assess its performance during and after implementation.
One project might be considered a success if it is completed on schedule, another if it is completed within the original budget, and a third if the project scope remains clearly defined and does not expand slowly ( scope creep ). But if someone else judges success based on the customer satisfaction associated with projects and customer expectations were not met, each of these projects could also be considered a failure.
Because failure is subjective, it is important to establish success criteria for a project plan. It is even more important that everyone involved agrees on and is familiar with a definition of success.
Anything else can lead to misunderstandings, dissatisfaction, and ultimately the splitting of teams into isolated factions – a recipe for ineffectiveness.
However, if everyone involved works toward the same goal and agrees on where the priorities lie, every project can deliver added value.
project success title
In this article, we will look at five criteria for project success that are commonly used to measure the success or failure of a project and introduce tools for performance evaluation .
How to measure project success
1. Content and scope
The content and scope of a project is about the expected results and the work necessary to achieve those results: What specific goals, products, deliverables or functions should a project deliver? What tasks, deadlines and costs are required to achieve this?
If content and scope are not fully defined at the start of the project, they should not be your primary success criteria. Remember: a key feature of Agile is the lack of fully defined requirements before the project starts, so Agile projects should use other metrics as well.
When you expand the scope of a project, you must also expand the budget and/or timeline. Often, project scope expands gradually as stakeholders want to add requirements during project execution without sacrificing anything elsewhere.
THE RISK: The Project Management Institute (PMI) announced in its 2018 Pulse of the Profession study that 52% of projects were affected by scope creep last year .
Here's how you can control project scope and content: During project planning, work with everyone involved to create a work breakdown structure that...
all project requirements identified
Requirements divided into smaller services
breaks down which tasks (and key resources*) are required to achieve goals
estimates the time required to complete each task
defines the critical path of the project
* Resources play a key role in determining the scope of your project. You need to know your team's availability, key resource usage, and how compensation rates will impact the budget.
Once you have established the critical path and understand how resource constraints affect the project schedule, you can visualize the project using Gantt charts.
When the project is displayed visually in a calendar, everyone involved can easily see the scope and what time and budget has been allocated for specific requirements.
At the same time, Gantt charts also serve as a tracking tool for the project: managers can use them to keep an eye on performance and ensure that the project stays on track.
Project success: adhere to project schedule and budget
A Wrike Gantt chart for the launch of a natural cosmetics range (
source )
2nd schedule
The timeline for your project includes not only the completion date (or product launch date), but also key milestones and task deadlines required for success.
The most common reason projects go over their original timeframe is overworked employees. You shouldn't expect employees to devote 100% of their time to a project, but Gartner says it's realistic to expect them to spend about 33% of their time on projects.
In “ Resource Capacity Planning for PPM Leaders: Crawl Before You Walk ” (the full report japan telegram data is available to Gartner clients), analysts Robert Handler and Mbula Schoen write:
"Forcing others to take on excessive commitments and jump from one activity to another unrelated activity costs 20 minutes to two hours in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of project work."
If schedule is the most important factor in success and you find that you are starting to fall behind schedule, you may need to increase the budget and hire more people to make up for lost time, or reduce the scope of the project to get as much done as possible by the deadline.
THE RISK: The Project Management Institute (PMI) mentions in its 2018 Pulse of the Profession study that last year 48% of projects were not completed within the originally planned timeframe.
How to monitor the schedule: There are many tools that can help you track the project schedule, such as Gantt charts and calendars. It is important to remember that you also need to monitor resource constraints.
Key performance indicators you can use to monitor project progress include:
One project might be considered a success if it is completed on schedule, another if it is completed within the original budget, and a third if the project scope remains clearly defined and does not expand slowly ( scope creep ). But if someone else judges success based on the customer satisfaction associated with projects and customer expectations were not met, each of these projects could also be considered a failure.
Because failure is subjective, it is important to establish success criteria for a project plan. It is even more important that everyone involved agrees on and is familiar with a definition of success.
Anything else can lead to misunderstandings, dissatisfaction, and ultimately the splitting of teams into isolated factions – a recipe for ineffectiveness.
However, if everyone involved works toward the same goal and agrees on where the priorities lie, every project can deliver added value.
project success title
In this article, we will look at five criteria for project success that are commonly used to measure the success or failure of a project and introduce tools for performance evaluation .
How to measure project success
1. Content and scope
The content and scope of a project is about the expected results and the work necessary to achieve those results: What specific goals, products, deliverables or functions should a project deliver? What tasks, deadlines and costs are required to achieve this?
If content and scope are not fully defined at the start of the project, they should not be your primary success criteria. Remember: a key feature of Agile is the lack of fully defined requirements before the project starts, so Agile projects should use other metrics as well.
When you expand the scope of a project, you must also expand the budget and/or timeline. Often, project scope expands gradually as stakeholders want to add requirements during project execution without sacrificing anything elsewhere.
THE RISK: The Project Management Institute (PMI) announced in its 2018 Pulse of the Profession study that 52% of projects were affected by scope creep last year .
Here's how you can control project scope and content: During project planning, work with everyone involved to create a work breakdown structure that...
all project requirements identified
Requirements divided into smaller services
breaks down which tasks (and key resources*) are required to achieve goals
estimates the time required to complete each task
defines the critical path of the project
* Resources play a key role in determining the scope of your project. You need to know your team's availability, key resource usage, and how compensation rates will impact the budget.
Once you have established the critical path and understand how resource constraints affect the project schedule, you can visualize the project using Gantt charts.
When the project is displayed visually in a calendar, everyone involved can easily see the scope and what time and budget has been allocated for specific requirements.
At the same time, Gantt charts also serve as a tracking tool for the project: managers can use them to keep an eye on performance and ensure that the project stays on track.
Project success: adhere to project schedule and budget
A Wrike Gantt chart for the launch of a natural cosmetics range (
source )
2nd schedule
The timeline for your project includes not only the completion date (or product launch date), but also key milestones and task deadlines required for success.
The most common reason projects go over their original timeframe is overworked employees. You shouldn't expect employees to devote 100% of their time to a project, but Gartner says it's realistic to expect them to spend about 33% of their time on projects.
In “ Resource Capacity Planning for PPM Leaders: Crawl Before You Walk ” (the full report japan telegram data is available to Gartner clients), analysts Robert Handler and Mbula Schoen write:
"Forcing others to take on excessive commitments and jump from one activity to another unrelated activity costs 20 minutes to two hours in terms of the efficiency and effectiveness of project work."
If schedule is the most important factor in success and you find that you are starting to fall behind schedule, you may need to increase the budget and hire more people to make up for lost time, or reduce the scope of the project to get as much done as possible by the deadline.
THE RISK: The Project Management Institute (PMI) mentions in its 2018 Pulse of the Profession study that last year 48% of projects were not completed within the originally planned timeframe.
How to monitor the schedule: There are many tools that can help you track the project schedule, such as Gantt charts and calendars. It is important to remember that you also need to monitor resource constraints.
Key performance indicators you can use to monitor project progress include: