Project Management

[ Project Management Topics ]

Critical Success Factors (CSF)

Critical Success Factors (CSF's), also known as Key Success Indicators (KSI's), are measurable factors that create an environment conducive to project success. Progress toward target should have milestones.

The idea is very simple: in any organization certain factors will be critical to the success of that organization, in the sense that, if objectives associated with the factors are not achieved, the organization will fail - perhaps catastrophically so.

One goal is to get agreement on what your critical success factors are. Once you select a set of metrics you have to live with them, therefore they have to be chosen very carefully.

Critical success factors in project management include things like:

• management and stakeholder approval (manager commitment to project)
• appropriate and clearly defined scope
• consistent goals and objectives for all associated with the project
• accommodation of people's needs and priorities
• building a good committed team
• having frequent and clear communication
• developing a detailed project plan
• consensus on expected project outcomes
• flexibility and a willingness to adapt
• leadership
• coming up with a realistic schedule
• sufficient resources

Success is not just completion of a set of activiites within time, cost and performanc constraints. It is, for example:

• within allocated time period and budgeted cost
• at proper performance or specification level
• with acceptance by the customer/user
• when you can use customer’s name as reference
• with minimal and mutually agreed scope changes
• without disrupting lives, organizations and cultures

Questions to ask yourself:

• How early does one company know whether a product - and the underlying project - is a success on the market?
• Why is it a problem when one project, although successful - "stole" resources from other projects/programs in order to respect deadlines and goals? (consider the stream of projects, not just one project, in making decisions)

What is hardest to track? Depends who you ask:

• Keep track of the exact hours spent on a particular project because many people work in a multi-project environment (L. Curhan)„
• Track progress: Almost impossible. Milestones are poorly defined and whether they have been meet or not is often subjective and can be "gamed" (E. Butler)„
• Time left to complete the tasks (reverse view from the endpoint of the project -not time spent) (M. Nolan)

Just as there are critical success factors for a project, there are critical success factors for implementing project management itself:

• Visible and consistent support of executive management
• Clear prioritization
• Use of facts and data for decision making
• Reglar communication in a "common language"
• Projects of appropriate scope and size
• Project tracking
• Organizational alignment