Like any good project manager, you live and die by the project plan. You meticulously map out every deliverable, milestone, and due date. You diligently track progress against that sacred timeline.

But let’s be honest – just because you delivered that big website overhaul or new product launch on time doesn’t necessarily mean it was a successful project. Meeting deadlines is great, but there’s so much more to measuring whether a project truly moved the business needle.

Successfully completing the planned scope of work on schedule and budget are fundamental necessities, but they don’t automatically mean the project was an outright success. The real measuring stick? How much tangible value did the project create for the organization and its customers? That’s where metrics beyond just schedule and cost come into play.  Some of you may be thinking, “My organization doesn’t care about this stuff.”  I’ve worked at organizations like that myself.  Consider this a way to demonstrate your value.  Even if you track some of these metrics for yourself, bring them up when it is time to discuss a raise or promotion or even interviewing for a new position.  Being able to describe the value you bring to an organization and back it up with data is undeniable and will impress leadership.

So, let’s go beyond the basics and dive into some of the key metrics savvy project managers use to truly gauge project health and delivery success.

Customer Satisfaction Metrics

At the end of the day, projects exist to create value for the people using or benefiting from the deliverables – your customers. So, their level of satisfaction with what you produced should be a paramount success metric.

For external projects serving actual paying customers, tools like post-delivery surveys, product usage metrics, support tickets, and social media feedback can provide quantitative and qualitative data on how well you met their needs.

But this concept applies to internal projects too. Your “customers” might be employees using that new enterprise software you implemented or the departments benefiting from that operational process improvement. Capturing their satisfaction through surveys, adoption metrics, etc is critical.

Bottom line: Did the project deliverables actually solve the problems or fill the needs you set out to address? That’s the ultimate measure of success. Oh wait, did leadership change the goal at the end of the project to meet the result achieved so the metrics look better?  Naughty, naughty.  C’mon, I know it happens.  Let’s face it.  There are some things outside our control.  At the end of the day, you know the truth.  And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Business Value Metrics

Every project, no matter how big or small, should tie back to measurable business objectives and projected value. Maybe it was revenue targets, cost savings goals, productivity improvements, or other business objectives.  So, along with customer satisfaction, you need to directly measure whether those quantifiable benefits were realized. A few examples:

• For a project to reduce operating costs, are expenses actually down the forecasted amount?
• Did that expensive new lead generation website deliver the expected uptick in qualified marketing leads and pipeline?
• Are efficiency metrics, like labor hours per widget, showing the anticipated gains from your manufacturing process optimization?

If you can’t draw a straight line from the project deliverables to positive business impact captured in hard metrics, then it was something short of a success in my book.

Team Productivity Metrics

Speaking of efficiency, the productivity of your project team itself is also a useful lens for evaluating success. Typical metrics here include:

• Planned vs actual effort hours
• Burn rate vs timeline
• Blockers, risks, and issues
• Velocity (for Agile projects)
• Stories or tasks completed per sprint

These types of measurements help expose how well you were able to utilize your team’s production capabilities over the course of the project. Because even a “successful” undertaking that was a grind and drained your team isn’t truly sustainable success.  “High stress, 10-hour days, and weekend work is my idea of a good time”, said nobody, ever.

Quality Metrics

Delivering all the stuff in the requirements doc is commendable, but if that stuff is buggy, breaks constantly, and doesn’t meet reasonable quality expectations, then that’s failure.

Code quality stats like testability, technical debt levels, code churn and security, etc. are vital quality markers for software development projects. For non-tech projects, you might look at metrics around re-work levels, reviews and approvals obtained, documented processes, and other proxies for quality execution.

Remember, the project may be “done” initially, but plenty of ongoing issues and rework can occur downstream if you allowed shoddy workmanship or low-quality deliverables out the door.

Risk and Issue Metrics

No matter how perfect the plan, every project hits a few (or all of the) potholes in the road. It’s just the nature of the work we do. What separates good project leaders from the rest is how they mitigate and manage risks and issues.

Tracking metrics like:

• Number of risks/issues raised
• Risks/issues severity mix
• Risks/issues burn down rate
• Average time to mitigate critical issues

This category of metrics illuminates your risk and issue management muscles. And you want to keep them flexible, because glossing over risks and letting them become distracting fires is a recipe for project chaos and failure.  You can’t always stop things from happening but you can manage what comes your way in a manner that causes the least amount of disruption to your project.

Leading Indicator Metrics

Here’s the cool part – by carefully tracking and managing all of the above metrics, you get powerful leading indicators that can help predict success long before you get to the delivery date.

If customer sentiment is trending positive, the team is hitting its stride, quality is high, and business value is accruing based on the interim milestones – then that’s a pretty strong sign you’re headed towards overall project success.  On the other hand, if metrics start flashing warning signals like dissatisfied customers, slipping deliverables, excess issues, etc., then you have a chance to course correct before it’s too late.

Ultimately, that’s why a rigorous metrics discipline is so crucial on projects beyond just blindly watching dates and dollars. It provides real-time, objective insight into whether you’re truly on track to achieve those all-important objectives of customer impact, value creation, and high performance delivery.   Also, as mentioned in the beginning, having a record of these metrics for your projects can come in handy for demonstrating the value you, as a project manager, bring to the organization.

So, don’t just measure activity, measure outcomes. Embrace a comprehensive metrics mindset, and you’ll be able to celebrate authentic project successes more often.