The BIG Question for any project management process

There is one and only one question that needs to be asked when ever any speaks about a pr oject management approach. Whether this approach is full DoD IMP/IMS down to someone claiming to have "magic beans." The method must ask and answer...

• How long are you willing to wait to find out you're late, over budget, or not on technical specification?
• What are you going to do to get back to some place that is acceptable to all the participants?
  

If your magic beans or your DoD FAR 15.2 procurement process can't answer these questions in some unit of measurable meaningful to the all the participants - you're not doing project management.

Comments

[Arturas]

For me the main three big questions that very hard to answer in any project is what ?when? and how much? If at any stage of the project you can answer these questions you are one of a hell project manager!

[Glen B Alleman]

Gregg,
Good catch. Yes, the 3rd BIG question is that. But like many in the PM community (agile for example) the units of measure of "value" aren't defined.
Dollarizing value is a start, but that begs the question - what "value" do we need, how can we measure this value, and what is the variance on the value we're trying to acheive?
This is the role of the Strategy portion of the project. Balanced Scorecard, with its attendent Goals, Critical Success Factors, and Key Performance Indicators is one approach to defining and measuring "value."

[Greg]

Your "one and only one" question is actually 2 questions :-)

I would add a third: How will you make sure that the project delivers or exceeds its expected value to its customer?