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Research paper (Assignment 2)

How to get desirable

outcomes and measure the
success of projects?
Sebastian Andres Rubio Palominos
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is the investigation of performance and behavior of people in project
success, and how these factors can affect desired outcomes and success measurement of projects.
In doing so, the paper presents different perspectives of managing projects from a technical and
social side. The first part covers the technical point of view, giving a sight of governance models
and best practices used by companies to align IT and business-related goals in order to generate
value and get the desirable outcomes according to these strategy goals. The second part covers
the top management support and its importance for achieving desirable outcomes from a
value/benefit approach rather than cost centric. Finally, the last part of this paper covers the value
of bettering people performance for higher business benefits from a motivation and influence
perspective. This mean, having engaged people in organizations and giving the right guidance
rather than impose thinking and authority, can bring higher performance and at the end a
sustainable success rate.
Introduction
Traditional project management has reached saturation in terms of it does not guarantee
successful projects (Young M. & Young R., 2012). Companies have been investing huge amount
of money in order to get better results and achieve their desirable outcomes. It is for this reason,
a number of researches and studies have been developed to find out what is the meaning and how
achieve certain level of success in projects (TOP, 2015). This paper is focused on analysing
different approaches that claim project success is linked with proper companys strategies
looking for value creation or realization rather than cost control.
It should be noted that in this paper the concept of desired outcomes, benefits and values will be
treat at similar ones, with the only differences that outcomes are created from outputs (e.g
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products, reports, etc) and benefits are in the top level of these desired outcomes which delivery
the final value to the business (Prince2 Agile, 2015).
In this sense, it is important to start this discussion discovering the meaning of value for
organizations. This concept will lead the new approach that this paper tries to bring up where top
managers or professionals need to understand in order to deliver the desired results through
project endeavour.
What is value?
The concept value is different from cost and money (Mosaic Project Services, 2016). There is
a factor of knowledge playing an important role in its definition as value must be understood to
be managed well. Ignorance can lead to a wrong utilization of the cost but not knowing or
comparing value.
Value has also relation with the project success so it should be planned and monitored before,
during and after the project has been created.
According to Simms (2015), there are 4 factors to determine whether or not a project has been
succeeded: all the benefits has been identified, costs and benefits had been validated, delivery
process are optimized and any changes in the costs or benefits are properly assessed.
But not always is easy to define the value of projects. Projects managers and top managers are
more get used to calculate in cent cost rather than the real value or benefits that a determined
work can bring to the enterprise (Simms J., 2015). Is for this reason, a clear and defined project
governance has to be settled in the organization to guarantee that the value is identify, tracked
and monitored for both IT and business areas.
Essential IT-business alignment
Modern business organizations have several complex areas such as an orchestra. Saying that, an
orchestra has different instruments or musicians that have to blend in a harmonic way to
producing the desired sound or music. In this same way, an organization has to perform. When
there is a proper management and governance, each part of the organization can deliver the
desired business value.
COBIT 5 is a governance framework provides a series of principles and enablers that help with
the alignment between IT and business-related goals from the perspective of governance and
management (Oliver D. & Lainhart J., 2012). The first principle out of five is all about meeting
stakeholders needs. The concept of value comes up straightaway to establish what are the
benefits that each stakeholder is looking for and how managers can address their needs.
This framework approach is a top-down validation of every level of responsibility in the
enterprise defining goals and objectives that have to be aligned with stakeholders needs
(COBIT, 2007).
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The second principle covers the enterprise end-to-end. The main objective of this principle is the
value creation. For this, COBIT 5 focuses on governance enablers (frameworks, principles,
structure, processes and practices), and resources such as IT infrastructure, IT applications,
people, and information (ISACA, 2012). Establishing that a lack of any of these resources can
affect the value creation process. Also, suggest a clear definition of governance scope and how
this can vary into the enterprise. Because of this, clear role, activities and relationships has to be
defined (ISACA, 2011).
This framework suggests mapping stakeholder needs to enterprise goals, then enterprise goals to
IT goals, and finally, IT goals to the enablers (COBIT, 2007). The result of this can generate
value creation and attain desired business outcomes (meeting goals).
The way as COBIT 5 measures desired outcomes is by assessing enablers provide accurate,
objective, and reputable results. Whether the given context which they operate should be
relevant, complete, current, appropriate, consistent, understandable, and easy to use. And finally,
whether the enablers are accessible and available when needed and secured (Oliver D. &
Lainhart J., 2012).
Finally, the use of this integrated framework allows to organizations to maximize values and
minimize risks related to IT. Further benefits that an enterprise can figure out using COBIT 5
would be an improvement from the perspective of enterprise IT, user satisfaction, compliance,
relationship between business and IT, and greater return of investments in technology.
Filling the gap from short-term and long-term strategy measures
Another governance model that bring the correct guidance for senior manager and governance to
pursue project success is the Balanced scorecard (Hammer, M., 2014). It is a management tool
that allows to stakeholders a comprehensive measure to track financial results, and at the same
time, monitoring progress towards the achievement of its strategic goals (Kaplan, R.S. and
Norton, D.P., 2005). The scorecard balances financial and non-financial measures, and also,
long-term strategy with its short-term actions.
Traditional companies management systems are built from the basis of short-term financial
measures and targets, which disables the companys progress for long-term strategic objectives
(Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2016). This gap between short-term financial measures and longterm strategy implementation is undertaken by four management processes scorecard from
different perspectives such as customer, financial, business process, and learning and growth.

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Figure 1 - Four Perspectives Balanced Scorecard

The first process translates the vision or strategy statement of the company allowing that all
senior executives and shareholders understand how their actions could contribute to realizing the
future companys goals (Kaplan, R.S. and Norton, D.P., 2005).
The second process link individual actions with strategy goals. This process allows an alignment
between department and individual objectives. Traditional companies evaluate their department
with financial performance, and incentives for their staff. Scorecard balances this short-term
incentive ensuring performance measures to long-term strategies goals. For achieving these
targets, scorecard suggests a program of communication and education of the strategic goals
from up-to-down direction in the organization in order to everyone is aligned with companys
goals (Kaplan, R.S. and Norton, D.P., 2005).
Another point is that many companies have tied financial compensation with their scorecard.
According to their CEOs, this compensation system has helped in the alignment between the
company and its strategy (Snapka, P. and Copikova, A., 2011). However, this can bring some
risks such as compensating the wrong measure, or if the company has the right measures on the
scorecard.
Building a balanced scorecard in an organization is a tedious process but has several advantages.
This allows strengthen companys vision understanding for the long-term, and stronger
commitment to attaining those goals and measures (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2016).
Top management support
On the other hand, social factors in the organization can help to understand project success and
measure it, as well. According to Rick Maurer (2010), in the last two decades, projects usually
fail in terms of the time, resources, budget, etc. used on it, but it is important the way how
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success is measured, where not only the project manager is responsible but also the Steering
Committee. According to Chapman (2016), the success or fail of a project should be evaluated
in terms of the outcomes of the same, in other words, whether it reached the goals and benefits
proposed or not. In this scenario, if the project shows proper budget and time but it does not
reach the value it represents a failure.
Steering committees can be responsible of 10% of the failure in projects mainly because of the
mistake of not protecting the value in first place, giving priority to the cost (Chapman, 2016).
Also, research has shown that they usually have a very poor understanding of what they role is
and how they could add value to the project (Simms, 2008).
In this sense, project success can be easily measured by responding four questions related with
the outcomes and benefits achieved, if there was an optimal cost for it and whether or not the
final project had relation with the pre-established, considering possible variations too (Chapman,
2016).
Now, knowing there are different models and frameworks to understand and measure project
success, and also there is responsibility from top management in order to determine benefits
realization, it is important to emphasis in science finding in terms of motivation for attaining
more business value.
Bettering people performance for higher values or benefits
According to Dan Pink (2009) there is a mismatch between science knows and business does.
Traditional companies give incentives to staff in order to ensure better performance. But in this
case, incentives only work for mechanical tasks, where shows that performing improves. When
there are rewards for even rudimentary cognitive tasks, the performance tends to be more poor.
People self-motivated, feeling that they are working for a greater purpose, perform better than
people receiving rewards or incentives. Financial rewards or incentives make people narrow their
focus and this lead to less or no solutions. Even this restrict the focus and possibilities of solving
a problem. For bigger or more complex problems, people need to think and see widely in order
to find the best solution between a bunch of obstacles. For this, people have to find their own
motivation.
It is necessary to change the common approach from incentives and results to a new approach of
intrinsic motivation. People can have higher performance when they feel that the work matter, is
important and likes.
The new resources for this new approach have to count with autonomy, the incentive of doing by
themselves; mastery, the incentive of doing better and better; and purpose, the feeling of being
part of something important and bigger.
Management is a concept emerged few years ago and suggests compliance of activities. The
new approach for higher performance and improvement of capabilities is self-direction. Giving
people the freedom to choose when and how they have to works, only focusing on deliverables.
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For example, certain companies give to the staff some hours of autonomy. One of these
companies is Atlassian. They have a challenge day called FedEx Day where for 24 hours the
staff can work in whatever they want, having the power of form their own team and develop an
idea. At the end of the day, everyone presents their ideas and win the best one in a very relax
workplace environment. This new approach of working has brought innovative ideas and major
productivity and business value.
Conclusion
Benefits are the main objective of a project. That is where organizations should focus on and set
most of their efforts in a good management to persuade this goal. However, organizations
management is usually focus in the process, tools or other factors that divert the main reason
why the project was made for. This can either be too simple, where the company only focuses in
the budget and loss a complete vision of the project and its benefits; or too complex, where the
workload becomes too high that again the delivery is establishing as a secondary goal.
The current management issue bases on the cost, which is now the most important factor in
companies. Because of this, organizations plan and track their process based on the cost rather
than the value of the project, which should be measured by diverse qualitative and quantitative
categories that will help to improve and give more value to the final benefits, instead of only
measure the cost. Actually, the cost should be evaluated once the project is already running and
then modify the value if necessary.
References
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Balanced Scorecard Institute (2016). Balanced Scorecard Basics. Retrieve on 18 September

2016, from http://balancedscorecard.org/Resources/About-the-Balanced-Scorecard
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