Avoiding the temptation of vanity metrics of time, cost, and scope
When a business decides to invest in a project it is very clear why it is making that investment. It understands how it aligns with the larger strategy and the leaders approving it know the specific business outcomes they expect to achieve. But too often, things start going wrong soon after that point.
As soon as the project starts, the focus shifts to the performance of the work against the technical parameters of the project – the budget to complete the work, the agreed upon scope, and the deadline that is expected to be met. There is rarely any consideration of whether the project can still achieve the benefits that were the reason it was approved in the first place.
Project managers and stakeholders make numerous decisions during the course of the project delivery phase, but rarely if ever do those decisions consider the impact on the business value the project will deliver. Instead, they try to keep the project aligned with those vanity metrics of time, cost, and scope. In a world that is changing as rapidly as ours, even ignoring the disruption caused by COVID-19, that’s a big problem.
But it’s not the biggest problem.
For many organizations, the consideration of whether a project is delivering value is never considered again after that initial approval. Even after the output of the project work is handed over to the customer group, no one takes responsibility for measuring the benefits achieved, and no one is held accountable for any variances. The expected value is either ignored or assumed, and neither of those is an appropriate way to determine the return on investment.
Things don’t have to be this way.
In fact, for organizations to succeed, things cannot be this way. While some benefits can take a log time to become apparent, and others are difficult to measure objectively, there are many ways a business can measure and assess the value that is being delivered by a project investment. More importantly, there are many practices that can be implemented to ensure a project remains aligned with that value – at all phases of the project.
At ServiceNow we are committed to ensuring that all of the work we do aligns with our business outcomes. We’re committed to helping everyone move to a metrics model that not only focuses on value, but helps to improve the delivery of that value. We’ve partnered with industry expert Andy Jordan for a webinar to explore it in more detail. Register here and learn how to implement meaningful metrics that drive better business performance.
