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Introduction
In the recent past, project management has become a very vital component element to any organization that needs to succeed. This has been due to the increased need for a company (or any organization in operation) to respond to the changes taking place within the business cycle and the stiff competition that has been arising.
The increased importance has also been due to the fact that its mostly through projects that companies are now able to respond to the market competition and also gain competitive edge over the rivals.
As a result, it has become an important function for the project managers to improve and increase the effectiveness and the efficiency in which they manage these projects by selecting teams that are capable of optimizing the project returns. According to Munns and Bjeirmi (1996),
A project can be considered to be the achievement of a specific objective, which involves a series of activities and tasks which consume resources. It has to be completed within a set specification, having definite start and end dates . Where as, project management can be defined as the process of controlling the achievement of the project objectives. (p2).
It is thus the function of the project managers to allocate all the scarce resources which are available and then plan how they will be executed and finally monitor and make alterations within the project if any are required during implementation.
While the difference between the project and project management may appear overlapping, it is important to note that a project is usually tasked with defining the returns that the company may achieve while the project management is concerned with planning and control of the project to enhance the project itself in achieving the organization desired objectives.
In order to optimize and measure the success of a project, there exist strategic weapons which the project managers can use to create economic value and competitive advantage over rivals.
There are usually four distinct aspects in which a project can be measured and they are: the efficiency of the project, its impact or effects on the customer, how the project affects the business and its likelihood of contributing to the organization success and finally how the management has prepared the project for the future.
When an organization is in need of introducing a new product, project management becomes necessary. Thus, the success of a project is solely determined by the effectiveness of the management (Shenhar, Dvir, Levy and Maltz 2002).
The effectiveness of the project is usually assessed by the different stakeholders in the organization. Examples of these stakeholders are the managers, customers, employees and so on. It is therefore important for the project success to reflect the views of all these stakeholders.
The gains that the project will bring to the organization are another major factor of concern in measuring the success or the likely acceptance and support of the project by the management. A project that is likely to yield low returns will not be implemented by a sound management team which does not have hidden agendas.
Lastly, how the project will place the firm in the market compared to other rivals is another aspect through which a project success can be assessed. If the project is likely to give the firm or organization an upper hand or a competitive edge over the rivals, then its chances of being selected are high.
Scope
With there being several critical success factors the study will only try to analyze the role of project management in ensuring critical success factors such as planning, time allocation and budget allocation are allocated efficiently. The literature review will cover the critical success factors, their measurability and the different forms of defining success in a project.
Limitation
The study will not be able to analyze all the critical success factors due to the fact that critical success factors are many and they vary according to the project thus we do not have the capability of pinpointing at a certain critical factor as the major source of the project success.
Literature Review
Measuring the critical success factors in the past has always been perceived to be measurable only through the financial success a project made or the financial gains the project produced to the investor.
However, it is important for the project managers to note that the financial returns through a better way of measuring a project success, is not always the best method for a long term project where the returns are low during the introduction years and higher as the project progresses.
Different projects have different rates of returns and while in the short run, the project which has high rate of returns is preferable in the long run, a project which will be able to make returns through out its life cycle is more preferred (Shenhar, Dvir, Levy and Maltz 2002).
It is always important to consider all the critical success factors that need to be analyzed and well understood before the project managers can choose which project to invest in and which project should be rejected.
How a project performs depends on many factors and the success outcomes include several project aspects such as how the project was completed, its schedule and the budget while the factors which may lead to the failure of the project include, writing schedules for the project, poor managers or leaders, misusing the techniques or even overlooking some of the basic requirements such as the commitment level needed for the project success.
As a result of the above factors, it is then important to plan ahead before implementing the project.
To ensure that the project succeeds, there is a need thus to review all the success factors that are likely to be involved and be critically observed if the project is ever going to achieve its objectives.
The concept of the critical success factors is well discussed by Zwikael and Globerson (2006) where when quoting several authors indicates that most projects fail due to wrong choices of the project manager, unplanned or sudden ending of the project and sometimes a management team which does not support the development of the project.
However, there are often challenges in identifying the critical success factors which lead to the project success. The study on which are the most common critical success factors has been under scrutiny with researchers giving several examples of what the success factors should be. Despite all these examples being followed and time invested, projects still fail to succeed (Cooke-Davies 2002).
Thus, the questions of which success factors lead to the success of a project remain critical. While some people assume that a project responds positively to the budget allocated, research done in Europe between 1994 and 2000 shows that there was no relationship between the schedule delay and cost escalation.
As we noted earlier when defining project and project management, the success of both are different and in order to bridge the gap between the two it is important to note that a project success is difficult to achieve than project management success.
The reason of this is due to the fact that project entails achieving goals and methods which are liable to change while project management success involves constant goals and practices which can change to meet some predetermined goals (Cooke-Davies 2002).
Thus, while the project remains constant or fixed in a way, the management of the project can change according to the existing dynamic conditions during the time of implementation.
Despite there being no agreement on the most recognized critical success factor, planning was found to be one of the most critical success factors. Due to the dynamics of the environment where the project is to be introduced, it is always important to plan in advance and consider all the risks which might be involved.
Following the inception of the project, the planning of the project comes before the execution and closure of the project. There exist different techniques of planning, which are applied according to the project uncertainty. There are evidences of projects failing due to lack of proper planning.
For example the Denver Airport project which due to poor planning, the costs jumped from an estimated 1.2 billion to 5 billion dollars (Zwikael & Globerson 2006).
What project planning simply does is to specify and set decisions which are to be implemented and how things should be done in future thus it is important for the project manager to ensure that the project is implemented according to the desires of all the stakeholders involved.
With the todays market having multifaceted aspects and due to the limitations which have been observed due to the over reliance on the financial methods of assessing success, several models for measuring project successes have been introduce for example the balance score card by Norton and Kaplan, intellectual capital, and success dimensions.
The methods of assessing the success of a project differ according to the success factors which the assessor is investigating. This is due to the fact that success has got different meaning to different people.
As a result of this, there has been the introduction of multidimensional framework for assessing the success which reflects three project aspects which are: the performance of the project, the implementation process and finally the perceived value the investor and the client satisfaction levels depending on the expert views, some have put the success dimensional figures but the most accepted are four.
The first success dimension is the project efficiency and how the organization meets its constraints. Most of the times, this is not a long run dimension since it is simply concerned with how the project is usually managed and how the project meets the scarce resources for which it was allocated for; the question of whether the project used the allocated funds well and whether it was completed on time.
Although at this juncture the project might be a success, it is usually considered a short term measure since how it will react in future is not usually well understood. If the company achieves success in this aspect, it ensures that there will be efficient management from the foundation.
The second success dimension is the impact the project has to the customers. To understand it fully, one needs to investigate and address how the customers perceive the project. As a result, the assessor assesses the performance measures as well as the technical expectations which the customers are in need of in order to ensure the customers derive maximum utility from the project.
When the project manager ensures that the project performance measures are observed. He very well knows that the customers will be satisfied since customer satisfaction ensures that the customers can come back for the products or even refer friends to the project products thus leading to success in the long run.
The third dimension in which project success can be defined is the business and its direct success. This dimension addresses on the project impact on the organization performance and it is usually measured depending on how the organization is making sales, the income, and the profit the organization is expected to gain as a result of the project success.
This impact however can also be used in measuring the success of non profit organizations such as taxation departments by measuring the duration the organization is taking to collect taxes as a result of the project introduction.
The fourth dimension which the project success can also be measured through is how the project is prepared for the future problems. It is usually a long term measure and it is used to assess how the project will respond to future opportunities. How the management is prepared to modify or make comprehensive change of the project as a result of introduction of new technologies in future is also assessed at this level.
Much attention has been given to the critical success factors which lead to the success or the failure of the project. To achieve the much needed success, it is advisable for the project managers to have a clear and communicate the shared vision. There are evidences showing that a clear project vision helps in success of a project.
Vision is usually defined as the ability to think of a project in future terms with clear imaginations and wisdom. A vision simply helps in clarifying a certain direction which ought to be followed in order to achieve the desired success. A major task for the project manager is to effectively ensure that the activities are being performed in alignment with the project goals.
It is important to note that the creation of an effective project vision requires excellent communication skills as well as possess a deep understanding of both the established organization culture and the triggering assume options that make the project team (Hyvari 2006).
The vision is the heart of the project since it holds all the stakeholders together through their core values, which all the players relate to. The characteristics of the company vision make a very useful model. A good vision contains both an ideology and an envisaged future within it. The basic dynamics of visionary companies is usually to preserve the core culture of the project and to stimulate progress towards the envisioned future.
For a project vision to be successful, it must have the following characteristics: the vision must accommodate the core purpose and the essence of the project objectives, the vision should also state why the project stakeholders should follow the project vision and it must also be consistent with the organization culture. The vision should also be proactive to facilitate teams in working smarter and more effectively.
It is important to note that the key to developing an effective project vision is usually to make the objectives and purpose clearly understood to inspire motivation and to ensure that the project vision is credible and challenging (Christenson & Walker 2004).
Due to the lack of agreement on the main critical success factors, there has been the development of a Formal System Model which seeks to unite all core system concepts. It contains the decision making subsystem a performance monitoring subsystem and a set of subsystems and elements which carry out the tasks of the system and thus effect its transformations by converting inputs into outputs (Fortune& White 2006 p54).
The decision making subsystem is responsible for decisions about how the purposes of the system are supposed to be realized such as the transformations by converting the inputs into final goods. It is thus the decision making sub making system and it enables the system to exhibit choice and thus making it behave in a coordinated manner.
On the other hand, the performance monitoring system observes the transformation processes and the reporting deviations which might be introduced if a corrective measure needs to be introduced. It gives some degree of connectivity between the project components and the environment.
The FSM model has been in use for a long time to conceptualize a condition and then determine to what extent some of the factors are linked to other features of the project (Fortune& White 2006).
Data and Results
Bank Company is one of the biggest banks in Saudi Arabia with its headquarters located in Riyadh the capital city. The bank brags itself with a business reputation of over 50 years of experience in the countrys banking business. Currently it has a network of over 550 braches around the country and it has the largest customer base in Saudi Arabia.
The firm has a well defined vision where it hopes to build 500 branches in three years and 400 of them to be completed during the first two years. The bank intends to invest 350 million Saudi riyals for this investment. The company has also invested much on the project by employing a huge team work on the project where everybody was assigned different duties and resposibilities.
The project was implemented under the Designs and the Project Management Department, where people are allocated different responsibilities. There is also an inside consultant who supports the project manager.
However, though the company had a clear vision, the achievement of the project was not achieved on schedule and some of the major reasons that caused the project not to be termed as a success were due to the fact that there was no support from the top management; all the stakeholders were not involved and even the manager of the project was not competent.
The performance by suppliers and also by the consultants was also poor. Another problem was that there was no project management which was used, the leadership was poor and such a big project required past experience which the bank did not possess. These factors when combined with the global problems such as the finance crisis led to the failure of the project.
Analysis and Discussion of the Results
From the evidence above, we have found that project success is usually not a single dimension although the top management thought the project would be a success due to the high income returns despite the delays during implementation.
For example, although the firm invested enough capital for the new investments; when measuring the success according to the impacts the project had on the consumers or the usage intended levels by the clients, the consumer perception was poor since in the already finished projects, the customers did not respond positively as it was expected.
The firm was offering no extra incentives that the ones which were already in the market and this played to the disadvantage for the company.
Another success dimension in which the firm failed was in the organization impact. Despite the project being huge and much promising, the top management did not support the project fully especially during the implementation stage and this was a major contributing factor to the project failure.
The project impacts on the organization success were also poor due to the fact that the project had very little impact on the organization performance and the decision making process. There was nothing the top management did to ensure the project succeeded as was required.
From the information above, it was also observed that the traditional measures of success such as time and budget had no significance to the success of this project. Though the project was completed on time, how the project could react to the future conditions were not well covered thus in case the future conditions changed, the project managers were not sure the project would survive in future.
With the lack of top management support, it was very clear that the project vision and missions was not in line with the firms vision and this was explained by the little commitment that was shown. It is also important to also understand how the customers will respond to the product.
Client consultation is always an important activity to do especially when it is a service oriented project such as a banking project. There was no client consultation in this case and as a result, the customers did not respond positively as it was expected and as a result, the project did not perform as expected.
From the case study, we have also learnt that competent personnel are very important for the direct project success.
If the project team was competent, it would have translated to an easier convincing of the needed customers; after the completion of the benefits they are likely to gain so as to increase the levels of the project acceptance how ever this was not the case and after the project was completed, there were no customers to attend to leading to the project failure.
The bank should also have introduced the project in phases such that after completion of phase one in a certain location and assessing of its performance, the bank could then have thought of whether to implement the other phases.
Conclusion
From the analysis and discussion we can reveal that for a project to succeed, how the managers handles the project is very important. First, it is important for the project manager to ensure that a criterion used to measure the project success is different away from the traditional method such as the budget and schedule methods.
As we have seen in the case of Bank Company, the budget was allocated effectively and time well spent but the project still failed. It is also important for the managers to look into the values that the project will deliver especially to the direct users who might make the project a success or a failure depending on their response.
The importance of the support from the top management has also been revealed as an important aspect, which contributes to the success of a project. This is due to the fact that with the support from the management, the goals are made clearer and the implementation stage also does not falter since it has the backing of major decision makers in the firm.
Lack of competency is also another problem which leads to project failures and thus it is important for the managers as it will help with a proper implementation.
From the study, we can also confirm that project planning, monitoring, client consultation and even the support of the management are important critical success factors and though they are needed for the project to be successful, they do not act alone but how well they are connected with each other contributes to the project success.
Finally, it is also important to note that the success factors are usually dynamic and they keep on evolving according to the type of the project and thus it has been hard to pinpoint certain success critical factors as the only main drivers for the project success.
Reference List
Christenson, D., and Walker, D.H.T. 2004. Understanding The Role Of Vision Project Success. Project Management Journal. Vol. 35, No, 3, pp. 39-52.
Cooke-Davies, T. 2002. The Real Success Factors On Projects. International Journal of Project Management. Vol. 20, pp.185190.
Fortune, J., and White, D. 2006. Framing Of Project Critical Success Factors by a Systems Model. International Journal of Project Management Vol. 24, pp. 5365
Hyvari, I. 2006. Success of Projects in Different Organizational Conditions. Project Management Institute. Vol. 37, No. 4, pp. 31-41,
Munns, A.K., and Bjeirmi, B.F. 1996. The Role of Project Management in Achieving Project Success. International Journal of Project Management. Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 81-87.
Shenhar,A.J., Dvir, D., Levy, O., and Malt, A.C. 2002. Project Success: A Multidimensional Strategic Concept. Long Range Planning Journal. Vol. 34, pp 699725.
Zwikael, O., and Globerson, S. 2006. From Critical Success Factors to Critical Success Processes. International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 44, No. 17, pp. 34333449
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