Give a overall General response to all these below:

Question 9

Who, if anyone, should be blamed for the failure of the projects in this case study?

My Answer:

In my opinion, no one person should be blamed for the failure of the projects in this case study. The reason is that not all projects will ever be successful and perhaps a success rate of 41.6% or 5 of 12 in the past year is a level the company historically performs at or is the desired ROI. For that reason, I do not feel that assigning blame is accurate.

In words of CEO Al Grey, not all projects that we recommend will be successful and any executive in this room who believes that they will all be a success is a fool (2019, p. 411).

Even with a project with the best-defined critical success factors, metrics, and KPIs a supplier can still not perform, technology could not be developed, or safety limits could not be achieved based on design parameters. The success of a project can sometimes occur solely for technical reasons.

Question 11

Would you agree with Al Grey that the real cause of the failures appears to be a lack of good metrics? If this is the case, then how do you justify that other projects were successful?

My Answer:

In short, I disagree with Al Grey and do not think the real cause of failure is a lack of good metrics. I think the lack of good metrics is only a symptom of the real issue. In my opinion, the root of the problem is insufficient stakeholder education (Moustafaev, 2015, p. 266-267) and an inadequate or completely missing stakeholder engagement plan (PMBOK Guide, p. 522). The executive staff meeting revealed that the leaders were not sure why the project was canceled late in the project life cycle and also why they were not aware of issues earlier in the project life. In the words of Al Grey whenever I review one of our project status reports, all I see is information on budgets and schedules the rest of the information is obscure or hidden and sometimes makes no sense to me (2019, p. 413). These comments tell me that the stakeholder need be educated and that there needs to be a plan in place to help them understand the status, risks, value, quality and image issues and accomplishments.

Asking leaders to think up metrics and come back with some measures is like needing to prepare a multi-course meal and simply running around the store grabbing random ingredients without a game plan for what meal will be prepared. The company needs to strengthen stakeholder education and ensure critical success factors are determined and understood ahead of time and that metrics and KPIs can help paint a picture and provide an early warning if the project is not on track.

The Need for Project Management Metrics (B)

Question 4

Are the four questions posed by John correct?

My Answer:

I do not think those four questions starting with metric selection and metric measurement, are the right questions John and his team need to ask at this stage.

In my opinion, John and his team should first start by defining what success will look like on each project. These are the areas and order John and his team should address first:

• This is the creation of Critical Success Factors (CSF). As stated in the text, CSFs measure the end result, usually as seen through the eyes of both the customer and the contractor (2019, p. 239).
• The second question should be to define the key performance indicators (KPI) for the project. KPIs focus on future outcomes and address Where will we end up (2019, p. 228)?
• Next, John should ensure a process to establish or ensure a competent baseline as the foundation for metric measurement (2019, p. 234). If a competent baseline does not exist for a constraint the project needs to measure such as schedule, quality, scope, cost, etc. then a metric selection will either be not very much use since there is no solid starting point to metric progress.
• Finally, metrics should be identified for each constraint on a project (2019, p. 161). The metrics identified need to be understandable, reflect specific, measurement, agreed with stakeholders on how they will be used.

Question 5

What metrics would you include in the list that may be appropriate for innovation projects?

My Answer:

I would recommend to John that he would select success-based metrics and project-based metrics (2019, p. 230) for innovation-centric projects due to the exploratory and creative nature.

Success is critical to measure for an innovative project because the firm needs to do more than just produce a new project or service and finish the project. The firm needs the result of the project to satisfy the customer to ensure value to generated and provided to the end-user.

Proposed metrics (2019, p. 230-231):

Success-based metrics

• Benefits achieved
• Value Achieved
• Stakeholder Satisfaction
• User Satisfaction

Project-based metrics

• Rate of change
• Quality
• Customer satisfaction with project performance
• Safety considerations

Help me respond to this