Report says “don’t measure time and cost”

Project management firm Acando has published a new report which takes a critical look at the use of time and cost as metrics for judging the success of a project.

The firm says that the report – ‘Don’t measure time and cost’ – forms part of its “ongoing mission to reduce and eventually eliminate project failure from project management”. Acando hopes that the report, produced by the firm’s managing director Phil Jacklin, will spark change within the industry.

Don’t measure time and cost argues that time and cost are poor metrics to use, stating that they have no value as predictors of the future, only cover one side of the metric triangle and vary depending on who does the measuring.

Acando poses the example of The International Space Station, which, despite an overspend of $13bn, is still widely accepted as a successful project.

The company reported that in a recent seminar, only one of 200 people considered The International Space Station to be a “bad project”.

Mr Jacklin said: “The purpose of the metrics should be to evaluate if the project is being well managed and to create a level of prediction about how the rest of the project will unfold. Time and cost do not achieve this in any way at all.

“Having a variety of metrics, from all sides of the triangle, enforces good discipline to focus on the many aspects of the project, or focus across the project, rather than simply achieving excellence in one metric at the detriment of other parts of the project.”
 
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