Make Sure Your Measures Add Value

Identifying, gathering and leveraging the right mix of metrics are ways to add value to a project. The value can be quantified in a number of areas including:

* Improved performance of the overall project fulfillment and delivery process
* Improved estimating for future projects
* Validation of duration, cost, effort and quality objectives for the project
* Identification and communication of best practices
* Improved client satisfaction

In general, metrics provide a more factual and quantitative basis for understanding how you are doing and the things that can be done better. Without at least some basic metric information, all discussions on performance and improvement are based on anecdotal evidence, perceptions and guesses. If you want your project's success or failure to be based on factual information, you need to determine the success criteria ahead of time and how to measure these criteria. Then collect the metrics, even if they are imperfect and imprecise. They still provide a better foundation than nothing at all.

Use the Metrics that You Collect

You don't want to collect metrics just for the sake of collecting them. That doesn’t make sense from a project management perspective and it just ends up being a waste of time. If certain metrics are required by your organization, collect them. In addition, you should collect any other metrics that are needed by your particular project. However, if you don't have a purpose for the metrics, or if your project is not long enough that you can really leverage the information, these customized project-specific metrics are not worth collecting for your project.

Compare the Cost of Collecting a Metric vs. the Benefit

Just as there is some cost associated with most project management activities, there is a cost to collecting and managing a metrics process. In the case of scope management or issues management, this is a cost the project manager needs to invest in to be successful, since they are core project management processes. The effort associated with managing metrics, however, is more under the discretion of the project manager and is dependent on the overall organizational culture. In many cases, the cost to collect and leverage a certain type of metric is prohibitive. These metrics should not be pursued. Other metrics are interesting, but do not provide the type of information that can be leveraged for improvement. The bottom line is that the cost to gather each metric must be balanced against the potential benefit that will be gained. Start by gathering metrics that are required by the organization. Then add metrics that have the lowest cost and effort to collect and can provide the highest potential benefit.

Link Team Performance with Individual Performance

This old adage about “what gets measured gets done” is true on projects. If communication is important on your project, build some metrics around communication. For instance, you can survey the clients and stakeholders on a quarterly basis to see how effective they think your communication is. If you are encouraging your team to reuse existing components, track the instances of reuse and the hour and cost savings.

However, you still may not drive the behaviors you need if the results of the metrics do not have a corresponding personal impact on the team members. The key is to collect metrics that give a quantifiable indication of overall team performance and make sure there is a connection between team performance and individual performance.

An example of where these are not linked is the classic case of the project that is seen as a failure, yet all the team members are evaluated highly on their performance reviews. Make sure that project team success is reflected appropriately in the individual performance reviews. If the team was successful, team members should be rewarded. If the team was not successful, team member reviews should be impacted accordingly.