Simple Conditions for Project Success

From the recent NASA Project Management Challenge are four conditions for project success:

1. You can't succeed if you can't manage the work, people, customer, and the environment
2. You can't manage these project elements if you can't measure their current state, their desired end state, and the progress being made toward that end state
3. You can't measure these states if you can't define what they are in some units meaningful to all the participants
4. You can't define these units of measure unless you understand the technical, operational, human factors, business, and political aspects of the project

The results of these "understandings" is represented in the Performance Measurement Baseline. The PMB is used to answer:

• How much will this cost (the all in cost) when we're done?
• When will we be done? Done, done, means all done, nothing else to do.
• What does done look like when we get there? Is the description of done acknowledged by all the participants, including the costomer?

The repeated mantra:

If you're not asking and answering questions like these - you're not doing project management.

You may be doing something else, but it's not project management.