Preface

Project Measurement is intended as a reference for project managers and anyone interested in implementing, improving, or evaluating a measurement program. It is organized so that Chapters 1, 2, and 3 should be common reading. The remaining chapters and subsections represent aspects of practical measurement that you may want to accomplish. With that consideration, many concepts are repeated throughout the book to avoid the need to refer to other sections that may not be of interest to you. If you are reading the book “cover to cover,” it should be interesting to note that some variation in common materials captures the variation in reality. This book does not treat measurement as an academic subject with right and wrong answers. Measurement is a tool, and the greater the skill you develop at using the tool, the greater the likelihood that you will achieve the results you seek.

Quite a bit has been written about measurement, particularly as it relates to project management. What distinguishes this book from others is that it takes an outside view of the organization needing to implement measurement. This viewpoint should help readers have a better chance of succeeding in measurement. What does that really mean? The vast majority of measurement programs are designed from inside the organization. Existing data are the first default used to drive measurement. The overriding assumption is that those who understand how a process is done will also understand how to measure it and be able to identify meaningful improvements or innovations.

Project managers understand risk. Not having the right skills behind a process greatly increases the risk that the process will fail to produce the desired result or will produce the desired result using considerably more resources than were necessary or planned for.

Succeeding in measurement means that everyone who needs quantitative information has the information they need in time to support the organization in accomplishing its mission and achieving its goals. Of course, there are a few other success factors for measurement, including efficiency, no disruptions, security considerations, no waste, etc.; but if measurement does not accomplish the goal of everyone having the quantitative information they need, chalk it up as a failure. This book is intended to help you achieve success in measurement.

Much of what organizations do or want to do is dependent on the ability and capacity to assess actions and results quantitatively. Measurement is the sine qua non (essential element or condition) for success in key initiatives, that is, those vital to the continued success and viability of the organization: faster, better, cheaper.

Measurement is a separate discipline from what is being measured. Special knowledge and skills must be employed to realize the full potential of measurement. It is important to note the comparison between experience and education. Experience is the basis for knowing how to do something well in a particular way, while education teaches that there are different ways of doing something. Knowing a process or even understanding it so that you understand the impact of changes or can trace changes in results to their causes is not the same as knowing how to measure that process or to how to conceive and implement a measurement program that will meet the goals that inspired the measurement program in the first place. Similarly, being good at a particular skill or discipline does not ensure that one will be a good project manager for that skill or discipline.

Measurement fits into several classifications, ranging from an exacting scientific discipline to a simple task. For the pragmatic purposes of this book, measurement is viewed primarily as a communications tool, and the “stakeholders” are its customers and users. For measurement to be effective and to succeed, stakeholder requirements must be reflected in the structure and operation of the measurement program. Part of this book describes how to engage stakeholders in the measurement program design process.

Since measurement supports the evolution of the subject being measured, measurement must evolve also. If we expect rapid change, it is likely that the measurement that supports the change decisions and validates the change results must evolve at least as fast, if not faster, than the change itself.

Measurement has a definite lifecycle. A generic learning cycle (the Kirkpatrick Model, 1971) applies to measurement where the discipline or process being examined is not measured and is not particularly effective, efficient, or robust. Sometimes it works very well, but in general, the processis not reliable at producing the desired results in all aspects in which it should be evaluated (unconscious incompetence).

The first step in the maturing process is to change the awareness of what goes on in the process through the measurement and use of quantitative tools. Once we are at least aware of the inadequacies and inefficiencies of the process, changes can be made to fix what does not work, add what is missing, and eliminate what is unnecessary (conscious incompetence). Measurement evolves with the changes until the process is mature and performs at a consistently high level of effectiveness and efficiency—generally known as robust (conscious competence). At the high end, where changes to the process are small and infrequent, the need for so much measurement decreases and the process evolves to the state of being efficient, effective, and robust without the need for measurement to confirm this state (unconscious competence).

As you progress, keep this sequence in mind. Chances are that you are not unconsciously competent, and initiating the measurement program will confirm it. In fact, many first measurement efforts fail because they succeed in illustrating incompetence that was not contemplated. It follows, then, that something must be wrong with the measurement—right?

This book provides considerable material intended to help you move from a state of unconscious incompetence to one of conscious incompetence. Some information to help you achieve conscious competence is also provided, but that evolution requires so much customization and flexibility that no effective prescriptive resource is available.

A NOTE ABOUT SECURITY

The best environment is an open environment where there are no secrets and there is no fear. Unfortunately, there are few real open environments in organizations. There is always an element of fear that data will be abused or used for purposes other than that for which it was intended. It seems that downsizing has become an unavoidable aspect of our business cycles. One fair and objective way to make the unpleasant task of selecting who will stay and who will go is to find data that illustrate a trait or condition that associates some putative business value with individuals. As a result, data are often prejudged in terms of their negative potential, just as risks are evaluated in project management in terms of the likelihood of abuse of the data—and the consequences. If the possibilities look too dangerous, the data are not collected, not communicated, or “massaged” to mitigate the risk of abuse at the cost of precluding their intended use or misrepresenting the reality that the data are intended to portray.

There is no way to accommodate fear in the organization. The commitment that makes a measurement program work has to include effective and absolute prohibitions against the abuse of data. Data that are past their usefulness should be destroyed. Data that are retained should be made anonymous or made accessible only to those whose responsibility includes protecting the data from abuse.

Steve Neuendorf