A project’s metrics serve an extremely important purpose; they allow the project manager and more importantly, the stakeholders to view the overall status of the project. This makes it extremely important for the proper metrics to be selected, so as to provide the most accurate assessment of the project’s status to its stakeholders. Time and cost are among the most notable and widely-used metrics used for measuring project performance, however, there are a variety of factors that can affect the performance of a project, such as:
- Benefits expected
- Value created
- Safety
- Risk
- Customer satisfaction
- Image
- Reputation
- Brand Loyalty
Benefits of Metrics
Selecting and utilizing good metrics can provide a long list of benefits for managing your project. Not only will doing so allow you to properly assess the performance of your project, it can also:
- Allow you to identify mistakes early on
- Lead to more informed decision making
- Allow for proactive management
- Improve future estimating
- Improve client satisfaction
- Allow you to track the ability to meet the project’s critical success factors
- Capture best practices and lessons learned, which are critical to long-term improvement
Selecting Metrics
Before any project truly begins, the project manager and stakeholders must sit down and determine which metrics will be used for assessing and measuring the project’s performance. It is important that these metrics are chosen carefully, as they will most likely be used as the basis for any business decisions made by the project manager and its stakeholders. This means that as project managers, we want to select metrics that will allow us and the stakeholders to make the most informed decision possible. The most important step in selecting metrics is defining a baseline for making measurements. Without a baseline, it will be very difficult to select and manage metrics for a project(s). Once a baseline is established, one can begin considering which metrics to use for performance measurement.
Some tips for selecting metrics for a project:
- Ensure the metrics are worth collecting
- Confirm what is collected is used
- Establish that the metrics are informative
- Train the team in the use and value of metrics.
Not only is it important that the right metrics are chosen, but it is equally important that the right amount of metrics are chosen. If too many metrics are chosen, the stakeholders may not be able to determine which information provided to them is critical and we (the project managers) may spend too much time managing metrics that could be used working on other necessary parts of the project. If not enough metrics are chosen, the stakeholders will not be able to make well-informed decisions as we did not provide them with enough information.
Reevaluating Metrics
Sometimes metrics chosen at the project start may not be useful to the project’s managers or its stakeholders anymore. This could be due to a multitude of reasons, such as:
- The cost of capturing and reporting a metric is worth more than the information it provides
- The information provided by a metric is not worth the time it takes to capture and report said metric
- Project funding limits the number of metrics that can be used
- The metric is no longer useful at this step in the project’s life cycle.
This makes it important that metrics are reviewed periodically, as capturing and recording metrics that are not of value can eat away at the project’s budgeted time and money.
8 Comments
Autumn Coulton · March 30, 2021 at 1:16 am
Good post Griffin, it’s very detailed on the importance of metrics and very aspect they have on decision making and project performance. Because of this, stakeholders and project managers must know what metrics to focus on and keep track of. While also finding a good balance of how many metrics should be recorded. Which is why it’s important for project managers to reevaluating metrics every so often. This will help keep the number of recorded metrics down and ensure that the ones they keep are actually worth it.
Brandon Kresge · March 30, 2021 at 10:44 am
Good job. I like the fact that it is not just the metrics chosen, but the right amount. Having too much or too little information would not be too helpful. I also like that reevaluating metrics are pointed out. It’s important to keep updating everything and getting rid of anything unnecessary, especially if it’s taking up resources like you said.
Sean Kinneer · March 30, 2021 at 11:18 am
Nice post, Griffin. I like how you explained the benefits of using metrics. It is important to select the relevant metrics that will actually be used along the way. I think that it is a good practice to reevaluate these selected metrics, as you said, in order to identify if a particular metric is still needed or not. This topic relates back to last week’s topic of Cost Control. Having a limited number of funding can dictate how many metrics can be used. It is important to use all resources wisely and to maximum effect.
Trisha Badlu · March 30, 2021 at 3:36 pm
Great explanation on metrics. The tips you mention for selecting metrics are also really helpful. It’s important to only collect the ones that are necessary so that the team isn’t wasting time gathering data that isn’t going to be used or if the data just doesn’t provide valuable information for decision making. I also agree that it’s important for the metrics to be reviewed often. Some metrics aren’t always going to be needed throughout the entire duration of the project so it really doesn’t make sense to keep collecting them if they’re not going to be used.
Brandon Sutton · March 30, 2021 at 3:39 pm
Very good post, Griffin. Metrics seem like a topic all too easy to gloss over and not put much thought into, but your post showed me the errors in that way of thinking. I liked the overall explanation behind the nature of metrics, and the caveat that not just which, but how many metrics should be gauged against the progress of a project. Finding that middle ground between too few and too many metrics is clearly a useful skill in project management.
Savannah Swartzel · March 30, 2021 at 3:49 pm
I really like that you have the reevaluating metrics sections. Some things that seem right at the beginning are not as right as a team thought they would be. This is a good article and I think you really captured the target topic well.
Manogna Pillutla · March 30, 2021 at 4:18 pm
Good post Griffin! Your focus on topic clearly reflects. It is good to see how you helped to understand benefits of matrices, select and reevaluation one after the other. I dint know if the reevaluation can be officially a process. Which brings me to my question, Can we change type of metrics or structure of it later in the middle or almost at the end of project?
Chris Kelly · March 30, 2021 at 4:55 pm
Good post! I wonder how involved the project team / software developers are in evaluating metrics, or if it’s just something the Project Manager and company deals with?