Preface

Forward-looking organizations that are progressive in strategic planning will continually strive to improve performance by sustaining success in all business and operational areas, including project management. In organizations where upper management values improved efficiency, a metrics program will be an essential business practice, as metrics address the long-term implications of every project within the context of the long-term strategies of an organization. Typically, a metrics program is a natural fit within an organization’s Project Management Office (PMO).

A metrics program can help guide an organization toward informed decisions, as it provides indicators regarding the quality, adequacy, and progress of projects, processes, and products. Metrics can help the enterprise recognize the sum of its collective capabilities, ensuring that plans for producing and delivering products and services are consistently realistic, achievable, and attainable. Metrics also can link the efforts of individual team members with the overall success of the project, and ultimately with the success of the organization. Consequently, properly designed metrics can indirectly promote teamwork and improve team morale.

Metrics for Project Management: Formalized Approaches describes a comprehensive set of project management metrics. Recognizing that project metrics can involve multiple dimensions, it presents metrics in the categories of “things,” “people,” and “enterprise.”

Chapter 1 highlights the need for a methodical, logical approach to metrics, the various utilities of metrics, and their limitations. Chapter 2 describes tools that can be used to gauge the success of the project team in handling project issues such as cost, scope, duration, and performance. The chapter also highlights critical success factors.

Chapter 3 enumerates the instruments available for assessing the motivation, performance, and behavior of team members, based on the assumption that these attributes influence how team members perform their project-related functions. Chapter 4 discusses metrics that assess organizational capabilities and collective enterprise project management performance. Enterprise issues include project management maturity and project portfolio management. Chapter 4 also discusses the influence of the PMO on project performance.

Finally, Chapter 5 presents the considerations involved in establishing a metrics program. In particular, it describes a methodology for selecting the most appropriate suite of metrics and developing an implementation schedule.

Chapters 2 through 5 each closes with a unique set of instruments designed to help readers implement a metrics program within their own organization. These instruments are necessarily broad but are easily adaptable to any organization’s unique needs.

Parviz F. Rad

Ginger Levin