Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Serra Dor 2015
Serra Dor 2015
Serra Dor 2015
ABSTRACT ■ INTRODUCTION ■
P
Many researchers have suggested that meet- roject success criteria have been measured in a variety of ways.
ing time, scope, and budget goals, some- Although the conventional measurement of project success has
times called ‘project efficiency,’ is not the focused on tangibles, the current thinking is that, ultimately, project
comprehensive measure of project success. success is best judged by the stakeholders, especially the primary
Broader measures of success have been sponsor (Turner & Zolin, 2012). As Shenhar, Levy, and Dvir (1997) and Turner
recommended; however, to date, nobody and Zolin (2012) note, assessing success is time-dependent: “As time goes
has determined empirically the relationship by, it matters less whether the project has met its resource constraints; in
between efficiency and overall success or most cases, after about one year it is completely irrelevant. In contrast, after
indeed shown whether efficiency is impor- project completion, the second dimension, impact on the customer and
tant at all to overall project success. Our customer satisfaction, becomes more relevant.” (Shenhar et al., 1997, p. 12)
aim in this article is to correct that omission. Building on that work, Shenhar and Dvir (2007) suggested a model of success
Through a survey of 1,386 projects we have based on five dimensions (Table 1). In a similar vein, Cooke-Davies (2002)
shown that project efficiency correlates mod- differentiated between project success and project management success.
erately strongly to overall project success Project management success is the traditional measure of project success,
(correlation of 0.6 and R2 of 0.36). Efficiency measured at project completion, and is primarily based on whether the
is shown through analysis to be neither the output is delivered to time, cost, and functionality (Atkinson, 1999). Following
only aspect of project success nor an aspect Shenhar and Dvir (2007), we call this ‘project efficiency.’ Project success is
of project success that can be ignored. based on whether the project outcome meets the strategic objectives of the
investing organization. In this article we focus on overall project success,
KEYWORDS: project; success; efficiency; which is measured by how satisfied key stakeholders are about how well the
project success; project and industries project achieves its strategic objectives.
Munns and Bjeirmi (1996) noted that much of the project management
literature considers “projects end when they are delivered to the customer”
(p. 83). They continued: “That is the point at which project management ends.
They do not consider the wider criteria, which will affect the project once
in use” (p. 83, our italics); this focus on the end date of the project is under-
standable from a project and project manager’s standpoint. The definitions
of a project imply an end date; at that time the project manager is likely to be
released or move on to another project. Also, the reward structure in many
organizations encourages the project manager to finish the project on cost
and time and little else (Turner, 2014). Gareis (2005) and Gareis, Huemann,
and Martinuzzi (2013) are very specific that project closing occurs with the
delivery of the new asset (the project output) to the client, and that the proj-
ect process is only part of the overall investment process. Thus the success
of the project itself is measured by project efficiency, but the success of the
investment is measured by the wider measures, as suggested by Turner and
Zolin (2012).
The literature has also examined the wider impact of projects on the
Project Management Journal, Vol. 46, No. 1, 30–39 business. Customer satisfaction has long been a part of the project manage-
© 2015 by the Project Management Institute ment literature (Kerzner, 1979, 2009) but it has not usually been included in
Published online in Wiley Online Library the formal measures of success. Shenhar et al. (1997) note that of the three
(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/pmj.21468 traditional dimensions of project efficiency—time, budget, and scope—scope
Figure 1: Frequency distribution of technical performance and customer satisfaction, after Zwikael and Globerson (2006).
and budget performance alone are where a completely objective solution Data collection ran for 12 weeks.
considered inadequate as measures of can be found and phenomenology, where A total of 865 people started the sur-
project success, they are still important all experience is subjective (Trochim, vey, with 859 completing at least the
components of the overall construct. 2006). Because perception and observa- first portion, which requested infor-
Quality is intertwined with issues of tion are based on subjective opinion, our mation on one more successful proj-
technical performance, specifications, results cannot be fully objective. Some ect. The sources of participants were
and achievement of functional objec- concepts such as project success are not PMI’s community of practice organiza-
tives and it is achievement against these fully quantifiable and are impacted by tions (638), LinkedIn groups focusing
criteria that will be most subject to vari- subjective judgment. Post-positivism on project management (197), the PMI
ation in perception by multiple project understands that although positivism Survey Links site (18), and personal
stakeholders” (p. 7). As we saw above, cannot tell the whole truth in business networks (12). Participants reported fill-
however, the components of project research, its insights are still useful. ing a variety of roles on projects: project
efficiency are neither necessary nor suf- manager (304), senior project manager
Survey
ficient conditions of success (Dvir et al., (141), program manager (72), project
2003; Thomas et al., 2008; Turner & To gather the data we conducted a sur- coordinator (66), project team mem-
Zolin, 2012; Xue, Turner, Lecoeuvre, & vey. The questions are shown in Table 2. ber (58), senior manager (36), senior
Anbari, 2013). Many projects are fin- We asked the respondents to judge suc- program/portfolio manager (22), and C
ished on time and cost but are abject cess in three categories: level management (14); 146 chose not to
failures, and many finish late and over • Overall project success rating; answer. Responses were received from
spent but are considered successful. • Project success as perceived by four 60 countries. The largest percentage
So what, if anything, is the relationship groups of stakeholders: the sponsor, of respondents were from the United
between project efficiency and project the project team, the client, and the States (36%), followed by Canada and
success? To date there is little empirical end users; and India. More than 10 responses were
work to investigate this relationship. An • Performance against the three compo- received from Australia, Spain, Brazil,
exploratory study is warranted and this nents of project efficiency: time, cost, Singapore, and Germany; 183 respon-
leads to our research question: and scope. dents chose not to answer the question.
To what extent is project efficiency Each participant was asked to provide
We also asked demographic ques-
correlated with overall project success? data on two projects, one more success-
tions about the nature of the project:
ful and another less successful. How-
Research Methodology • Which industry does it come from? ever, not all participants entered data for
We adopted a post-positivist approach. • In which country was it performed? two projects; therefore, the total num-
Post-positivism falls between positivism, • Was it a national or international project? ber of projects available for study was
1,539. After removal of outliers and bad time had passed to have a reasonable performance measures, as discussed by
data, the usable total was 1,386 projects. assessment of overall project success. Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, and Pod-
Outlier removal included the removal With most studies of project suc- sakoff (2003) and Conway and Lance
of projects that were cancelled or not cess using questionnaires or interviews, (2010). By targeting project managers,
completed. The breakdown of projects the results rely on participants stating we intended to receive information
by success rating is shown in Table 3. how successful a project was, which from the individual who would have a
If we create a histogram (Figure 2), is subjective by nature. There may be chance to provide the best overall view
we can see that the methodology has ways to measure success in objective of the project.
resulted in an acceptable range of proj- ways, but this may only apply to proj- Questions also used varied scales,
ects. When the projects were consoli- ect efficiency; therefore, this article is as recommended by Podsakoff et al.
dated, we confirmed there was a range mainly concerned with perceived proj- (2003). In addition, factor analysis and
of projects available in a usable distri- ect success as reported by participants. Cronbach’s alpha analysis were com-
bution. Results were similar for the two To measure this factor, questions in the pleted where appropriate. To avoid
success measures. survey were based on a combination social desirability issues related to proj-
Although there are aspects of project of the success dimensions defined by ect success, respondents were asked to
success that are temporal (Shenhar & Müller and Turner (2007b) and Shenhar provide data for both a more success-
Dvir, 2007; Turner & Zolin, 2012), this and Dvir (2007). ful and less successful project. Finally,
research did not specifically measure the It is the nature of an anonymous, the use of PMI’s community of practice
impact of time on judgments of project open global survey that there may be groups, LinkedIn, and personal contacts
success. Data were selected for com- single respondent bias. Each project is ensured there were no convenience
pleted projects to ensure that enough described by one respondent and for the sample issues; hence, mono-source
sake of privacy the names of the projects bias was assumed not to be an issue
or organizations were not sought. It is for this research. Survey questions, in
Valid N
not possible to completely remove the general used a 5- or 7-point Likert-like
Failure 98 single respondent bias, but to minimize numerical scale (Cooper & Schindler,
Not Fully Successful 259 the impact, each respondent was asked 2008). Pure Likert scales were not used
Mixed 345 to provide information on one more suc- because there were several questions
Successful 451 cessful and one less successful project. where numerical responses were appro-
This was intended to ensure respon- priate. The varying scale was partially
Very Successful 233
dents did not just provide information due to following the scales from the
All Groups 1,386 on their most successful project. existing literature, using 7-point scales
Table 3: Project success rating for all Mono-source bias and other to allow optimum ordinal value for
projects. response biases can occur in self-rated numerical ranges and 5-point scales
for subjective ratings. Since a variety of
scales were used this ensured that item
context effects as per Podsakoff et al.
Histogram: Project Success Rating
500 (2003) were not an issue.
450 Expected Normal
Results and Analysis
400
Analysis
No. of observations
350
To facilitate further analysis, the suc-
300 cess measures were grouped into
250 three measures of success. These were
the measures of project success used
200
throughout the analysis:
150 Efficiency measure = mean of the
100 following three responses as a sum-
50
mated scale:
in the literature (Atkinson, 1999; project success measure and 0.58 with success rating and the project suc-
Cooke-Davies, 2002; Shenhar & Dvir, the respondents’ self-reported overall cess measure is between 0.4 and 0.6.
2007), there is adequate justification to success rating. The highest correlation is with meet-
keep it part of the efficiency measure Table 9 shows the correlation of ing scope goals, as we would expect
as defined. the individual measures of project (Shenhar et al., 1997).
efficiency, time, cost, and scope with We can also look at how this rela-
Subgroup Analysis the measures of project success. The tionship varies by industry (Table 10).
The means of these measures were correlation with the overall project It is interesting to note that efficiency
reviewed using subgroup analysis.
First, the measures were compared
Efficiency Project Success Overall Project
by industry (Table 7). In addition, to Measure Measure Rating Valid N
the three calculated measures of suc-
Construction 4.630 3.660 3.528 41
cess, the respondents’ response to the
single question: “Overall project suc- Financial services 4.618 3.354 3.355 257
cess rating” was examined. We see that Utilities 4.535 3.553 3.455 42
construction has the highest project Government 4.731 3.438 3.423 152
success measure. This is in agreement
Education 5.080 3.530 3.480 42
with the literature in general that con-
Other 4.455 3.233 3.231 157
struction has better perceived rates of
success than other industries (Zwikael High technology 4.784 3.538 3.477 223
& Globerson, 2006). However, other Telecommunications 4.805 3.458 3.393 133
trends are more difficult to see, and Manufacturing 4.298 3.295 3.286 122
ANOVA analysis does not indicate that
Healthcare 4.895 3.408 3.303 113
any of the measures are significantly
related to industry. Professional services 4.685 3.292 3.352 69
Next, subgroup analysis was com- Retail 4.367 3.000 2.933 35
pleted by geographic region, which All groups 4.656 3.397 3.361 1386
showed similar results, supporting the p(F) 0.397 0.496 0.882
overall results.
Table 7: Descriptives by industry with ANOVA results.
Next, we examined the correlation
between the respondents’ project suc-
cess ratings and the success measures
(Table 8). The analysis shows close to Std Overall Project Efficiency Project Success
90% correlation between this one ques-
Means Dev Success Rating Measure Measure
tion and the project success measure Overall project 3.333 1.165 1.000
and 0.58 to the efficiency measure, success rating
which indicates a very close correlation Efficiency 4.647 1.386 0.584* 1.000
between the respondents’ overall rating measure
of project success and measures com- Project success 3.376 1.044 0.870* 0.602* 1.000
bining the wider success components. measure
However, the efficiency measure only *p < 0.05.
shows a 0.58 correlation with the man- Table 8: Correlations between project success measures.
ager’s assessment; this appears to indi-
cate that project managers also believe
the overall success of their projects is
most closely correlated with the stake-
Overall Project Efficiency Project Success
Success Rating Measure Measure
holder’s views.
Project time goals 0.508* 0.880* 0.506*
Project Efficiency versus Project Success Project budget goals 0.408* 0.830* 0.417*
The success measure that had the low- Scope and requirements goals 0.537* 0.768* 0.578*
est correlation with the other success
*p < 0.05.
measures was the efficiency measure,
Table 9: Correlation of individual efficiency measures to project success measures.
which had a correlation of 0.60 with the
between measures of time and budget Practical Implications Journal of Project Management, 27(4),
success and project success. Whether we will ever be able to wean 355–364.
project practitioners off their beloved Conway, J., & Lance, C. (2010). What
Conclusions iron triangle we cannot know. This reviewers should expect from authors
supports the work of Turner and Zolin regarding common method bias in orga-
As suggested by many authors (Collyer
(2012) that project managers need proj- nizational research. Journal of Business
& Warren, 2009; Cooke-Davies, 2002;
ect control parameters that look beyond and Psychology, 25(3), 325–334.
Jugdev & Müller, 2005; Shenhar et al.,
completing the scope of the project on Cooke-Davies, T. J. (2002). The real
1997; Shenhar & Dvir, 2007; Thomas
time and within budget. Practitioners success factors in projects. International
et al., 2008; Turner & Zolin, 2012), over-
should be aware that when they plan Journal of Project Management, 20(3),
all project success is a much wider con-
and control the project broader suc- 185–190.
cept than the traditional so called ‘iron
cess measures need to be taken into Cooper, D., & Schindler, P. (2001).
triangle’ of project efficiency (Atkinson,
account and made parts of the planning Business research methods. New York, NY:
1999). In this article we have investi-
and control process. This will improve Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
gated to what extent project efficiency is
project and project manager perceived
correlated with overall project success. Dvir, D., Raz T., & Shenhar, A. (2003).
success, especially over the long term.
Through a survey of 1,386 projects we An empirical analysis of the relationship
These results also demonstrate that
found that project efficiency is 60% cor- between project planning and project
practitioners cannot ignore project effi-
related with project success; this falls to success. International Journal of Project
ciency goals if they want to maximize
51% if efficiency is defined as time and Management, 21(2), 89–95.
overall success.
budget only. This supports the asser- Gareis, R. (2005). Happy projects!
tion that project efficiency is an impor- Future Research Vienna, Austria: Manz.
tant contributor to project success, but There are aspects of the relationship Gareis, R., Huemann, M., & Martinuzzi,
shows quite clearly that other factors between efficiency and success that A. (2013). Project management
contribute significantly as well. We can could be further explored: and sustainable development prin-
postulate that these other factors might ciples. Newtown Square, PA: Project
include: • How do timeframes impact project suc- Management Institute.
cess? Do the sponsor’s views of project
• Performance of the project’s output Jugdev, K., & Müller, R. (2005). A ret-
success change over time and how long
post implementation and achievement rospective look at our evolving under-
before that does the view crystallize or
of the project’s output and impact standing of project success. Project
become the final view?
(Turner et al., 2010; Turner & Zolin, Management Journal, 36(4), 19–31.
• Are there any moderators or con-
2012; Xue et al., 2013) Kerzner, H. (1979). Project management:
tingency factors in the relationship
• Whether the project’s output was what A systems approach to planning, schedul-
between efficiency and success? This
the stakeholders were actually expect- ing, and controlling. New York, NY: Van
could also become a topic for future
ing, or whether there was an omis- Nostrand Reinhold.
research.
sion in or misinterpretation of the • A similar study could be undertaken Kerzner, H. (2009). Project management:
specification with a wider array of project partici- A systems approach to planning,
• Risks that were not considered or pants. This would require more of a scheduling, and controlling. Hoboken,
changes to the environment that were case study approach but would give a NJ: Wiley.
not anticipated (Munns & Bjeirmi, broader view of how project success is Müller, R., & Turner, J. R. (2007a).
1996; Thomas et al., 2008; Collyer & perceived. Matching the project manager’s leadership
Warren, 2009) style to project type. International Journal
• Acts of God beyond the project team’s References of Project Management, 25(1), 21–32.
control. Atkinson, R. (1999). Project manage- Müller, R., & Turner, J. R. (2007b). The
ment: Cost, time and quality, two influence of projects managers on project
Academic Implication best guesses and a phenomenon, it’s success criteria and project success by
It has long been postulated that project time to accept other success crite- type of project. European Management
success is more than the achievement ria, International Journal of Project Journal, 25(4), 298–309.
of project efficiency measures, but we Management, 17(6), 337–342. Munns, A., & Bjeirmi, B. (1996). The
believe this is the first time the relation- Collyer, S., & Warren, C. M. (2009). role of project management in achieving
ship has actually been measured and Project management approaches for project success. International Journal of
analyzed using a large dataset. dynamic environments. International Project Management, 14(2), 81–87.