Author: Shahidah FOSTER, CAPM
Every other month, the Curator’s Pick brings you selected learning content from the PMI library. Each article spotlights one key topic drawn from PMI focus areas, PMI Switzerland Members’ Choice, or emerging trends.
This edition focuses on the recent evolution in how the PMI defines project success. The definition of project success is evolving from a process-centric perspective (did we deliver the thing?) to a value-centric perspective (did the thing we delivered create value?).
The global economy is transforming, and as uncertainty increases, it is more important than ever for companies to focus on nurturing and accelerating the growth of their products and services, as well as increasing margins, to stay resilient. Using value as a metric in projects (especially in product development) is strategic and powerful for driving the innovation and customer success needed for this kind of growth. PMI offers a wide range of learning resources that explore the power of using value as a success metric and how to guard against its pitfalls.
The following curated resources offer practical and strategic perspectives to project leaders and professionals to navigate this shift and strengthen their impact going forward.
Our first resource, the Step Up: Redefining the Path to Project Success with M.O.R.E. report, shares a framework based on the updated definition of project success: delivering value that is perceived by stakeholders as worth the effort and expense. The framework, M.O.R.E., stands for the following principles:
M – Manage perceptions
O – Own success
R – Relentlessly reassess
E – Expand perspective
This framework increases project success, guiding practitioners through fundamental activities such as measuring performance, defining value (success criteria), using regular progress measurements to guide decision-making, and explaining why striving to deliver greater value enhances value delivery.
The next resource, From Vision to Practice: A Playbook to Apply M.O.R.E. report, takes it a step further by exploring the list of practices, using robust explanations such as mapping principles to focus areas and performance domains, sharing examples of proper application of each principle including case studies that detail the challenge and approach used to drive key results as well as “Try This” suggestions for how to put each of the principles in action.
If value is the primary measure of project success, then the next resource, the Projectified® Podcast’s episode on How Project Managers Spot Red Flags and Get Ahead of Them, offers advice to project professionals on ensuring project success, specifically by identifying common warning signs and managing scope. This episode shares how to recognize and deal with scope creep, ambiguity in scope, adjusting scope, and how to communicate warning signs at the executive level.
Whether you are learning to define value or measure project success by value delivered, these resources offer perspectives on how project professionals and practitioners can operationalize value responsibly. We invite you to explore PMI articles and webinars to identify which insights are most relevant to your current projects or initiatives and their priorities.
Authored by Shahidah FOSTER, CAPM