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337±342, 1999
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This paper provides some thoughts about success criteria for IS±IT project management. Cost,
time and quality (The Iron Triangle), over the last 50 years have become inextricably linked with
measuring the success of project management. This is perhaps not surprising, since over the same
period those criteria are usually included in the description of project management. Time and
costs are at best, only guesses, calculated at a time when least is known about the project. Qual-
ity is a phenomenon, it is an emergent property of peoples dierent attitudes and beliefs, which
often change over the development life-cycle of a project. Why has project management been so
reluctant to adopt other criteria in addition to the Iron Triangle, such as stakeholder bene®ts
against which projects can be assessed? This paper proposes a new framework to consider success
criteria, The Square Route. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved
Keywords: Project management, success criteria
Research studies investigating the reasons why projects The Iron Triangle success criteria to be almost inex-
fail, for example Morris and Hough1 and Gallagher,2 tricably linked with those de®nitions. Next, an argu-
provide lists of factors believed to contribute to the ment for considering other success criteria is put
project management success or failure. At the same forward, separating these into some things which are
time some criteria against which projects can be done wrong and other things which have been missed
measured are available, for example cost, time and or not done as well as they could have done. In the
quality often referred to as The Iron Triangle, Figure 1. third section, other success criteria, proposed in the lit-
Projects however continue to be described as failing, erature is reviewed. Finally The Iron Triangle and
despite the management. Why should this be if both other success criteria are placed into one of four major
the factors and the criteria for success are believed to categories, this is represented as The Square Route.
be known? One argument could be that project man- First a reminder about how project management is
agement seems keen to adopt new factors to achieve de®ned, the thing we are trying to measure.
success, such as methodologies, tools, knowledge and
skills, but continues to measure or judge project man-
agement using tried and failed criteria. If the criteria
were the cause of reported failure, continuing to use
What is project management?
those same criteria will simply repeat the failures of Many have attempted to de®ne project management.
the past. Could it be the reason some project manage- One example, Oisen,3 referencing views from the
ment is labelled as having failed results from the cri- 1950's, may have been one of the early attempts.
teria used as a measure of success? The questions then Project Management is the application of a collection of
become: what criteria are used and what other criteria tools and techniques (such as the CPM and matrix or-
could be used to measure success? This paper takes a ganisation) to direct the use of diverse resources toward
look at existing criteria against which project manage- the accomplishment of a unique, complex, one-time
ment is measured and proposes a new way to consider task within time, cost and quality constraints. Each task
success criteria, called the Square Route. requires a particular mix of theses tools and techniques
The paper has four sections. First, existing de®- structured to ®t the task environment and life cycle
nitions of project management are reviewed, indicating (from conception to completion) of the task.
337
Project Management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses: R. Atkinson
have been done, such as using incomplete criteria for method which when less than actual costs indicates the
success. I agree with Handy that the two error types project is going o track. deWit18 however points out
are dierent. To provide an example, consider an ana- that when costs are used as a control, they measure
logy with musicians. An amateur musician will practice progress, which is not the same as success.
until they get a piece of music right. That is to say Naturally some projects must have time and or costs
they are trying not to commit a Type I error and get as the prime objective(s). A millennium project for
the tune wrong. In contrast a professional musician example must hit the on-time objective or problems
will practice until the tune cannot be played any bet- will follow. Projects measured against cost, time and
ter. Professional musicians are trying not to commit a quality are measuring the delivery stage, doing some-
Type II error, for them it's not a matter of whether thing right. Meyer24 described these as Results
the tune was right or wrong but the piece of music Measurement, when the focus is upon the task of pro-
was played as good as it could have been. Error types ject management, doing it right. Table 1 gives the four
can be considered simply as the sin of commission guiding principles described by Meyer.24 A signi®cant
(Type I error), or the sin of omission (Type II error). point made by Meyer24 is thatÐperformance measure-
Finding a negative, a Type II error is almost imposs- ment for cross functional team based organisations
ible, how do you know what to look for, or if you have which deliver an entire process or product to custo-
found it, if you don't know what it is. While Type II mers are essential. Project management does not use
errors are not easy to ®nd using research methods, it is traditional, functional teams, performance measure-
possible to trip up over a Type II error. Classic ment can therefore be argued as essential success cri-
examples such as the discovery of the smallpox vaccine, teria.
should provide evidence that it is worthwhile consider- For other projects such as life critical systems, qual-
ing new ideas, when found by chance. History records, ity would be the overriding criteria. The focus now
that what the people with smallpox had in common, moves to getting something right. Time and costs
was something missing, i.e., they all did not have cow become secondary criteria while the resultant product
pox. Dairy maids did have cow pox and dairy maids is the focus. Alter25 describes process and organis-
did not get small-pox. From cow-pox the small-pox ational goals as two dierent measures of success. This
vaccine was developed. A negative was discovered. takes the focus away from `did they do it right', to,
Continuing to research only where there is more light, `did they get it right', a measure only possible post im-
i.e., trying to ®nd a common positive link of those with plementation. But projects are usually understood to
small-pox would never have provided a result. The have ®nished when the delivery of the system is com-
common link was a Type II error, it was something plete. The on-time criteria of the delivery stage does
that was missing. It is therefore worth considering and not allow the resultant system and the bene®ts to be
trying new additional criteria (Type II errors) against taken into consideration for project management suc-
which project management could be measured. The cess. Time, one criteria of the process function seems
worst that can happen is they are tried and rejected. to overarch the chance of other criteria, post im-
The rate of project management success at present is plementation from being included. Providing time is
not as good as it could be, things could be better. What not critical, the delivery criteria are only one set
then are the usual criteria used to measure success? against which success can be measured.
Measuring the process criteria for project manage-
ment is measuring eciency. Measuring the success of
Criteria for success the resultant system or organisation bene®ts, the cri-
teria changes to that of assessing, getting something
The delivery stage: the process: doing it right right, meeting goals, measuring eectiveness. So what
Oilsen3 almost 50 years ago suggested cost, time and are these criteria?
quality as the success criteria bundled into the descrip-
tion. Wright14 reduces that list and taking the view of
a customer, suggests only two parameters are of im-
portance, time and budget. Many other writers Post delivery stage: the system: getting it right
Turner,15 Morris and Hough,16 Wateridge,17 deWit,18 First, who should decide the criteria? Struckenbruck26
McCoy,19 Pinto and Slevin,20 Saarinen21 and considered the four most important stakeholders to
Ballantine22 all agree cost, time and quality should be decide the criteria, were the project manager, top man-
used as success criteria, but not exclusively. Temporary agement, customer-client, and the team members. Two
criteria are available during the delivery stage to gauge other possible criteria which could be used to measure
whether the project is going to plan. These temporary the success of the project are the resultant system (the
criteria measurements can be considered to be measur- product) and the bene®ts to the many stakeholders
ing the progress to date, a type of measurement which involved with the project such as the users, customers
is usually carried out as a method of control. For or the project sta.
example Williams23 describes the use of short term DeLone et al.27 identi®ed six post implementation
measures during project build, using the earned value systems criteria to measure the success of a system.
339
Project Management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses: R. Atkinson
340
Project Management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses: R. Atkinson
341
Project Management: Cost, time and quality, two best guesses: R. Atkinson
beyond the scope of this paper, but is a task which has 20. Pinto, JK and Slevin, DP, Critical success factors across the
been started by the de®nition oered by Turner10Ðthe project lifecycle. Project Management Journal, 1988, XIX, 67±
75.
art and science of converting vision into reality. 21. Saarinen, T, Systems development methodology and project
success. Information and Management, 1990, 19, 183±193.
22. Ballantine, J, Bonner, M, Levy, M, Martin, A, Munro, I and
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