Understand behavioral concepts and other human issues in evaluation and control. Another recurring problem with establishing accurate or meaningful EVM results has to do with the need to recognize the human factor in all project activity completion projections. That is$,$ there is a strong incentive in most organizations for project team members to continuously report stronger results than may be warranted in the interest of looking good for the boss or sending the right signals about the projects status. Worse, many times implicit or even explicit pressure may come from the project managers themselves, as they find themselves under pressure from top management to show steady results. Hence, the level of detail controversy is not simply one of accurately matching technical performance on the project to the best external indicator or number of gradients. Often it is also a problem rooted in human behavior, suggesting that excessively fine levels of detail not only may be inappropriate for the types of project activities we engage in$,$ but also may be prone to misuse by the project team.The common feature of control approaches is their reliance on measurable data based on project outcomes; that is$,$ the results of project actions taken in any one time are collected and reported after the fact. Hence, we determine schedule or cost variance after the information has been collected and reported. Some project management writers, however, have suggested that it is equally essential to maintain a clear understanding of the importance of the management of people in the project implementation process. In other words, the data collected from the various evaluation and control techniques represents important outcome measures of the project; however, comprehensive project control also requires that the project organization employ sufficient process evaluations to determine how the development is progressing. A key component of any process evaluation of project performance must include an assessment of its people, their technical skills, management, teamwork, communication processes, motivation, leadership, and so forth. In short, many evaluation and control techniques $($such as EVM$)$ will do an excellent job in answering the what questions $($What is the status of the project? What is our cost efficiency factor? What tasks are currently running late?$),$ but they do not attempt to answer the why questions $($Why are activities behind schedule? Why is the project team performing at a suboptimal level?$).$ To provide answers to the why questions, work on the human processes in project management has been initiated and continues to be done. Past research examining the impact of human factors on project success bears out the importance of considering the wider management challenge inherent in managing projects. For example, the early work of Baker and colleagues identified a variety of factors that directly predict project success. Included in their list were issues such as: o Project coordination and relations among stakeholderso Adequacy of project structure and controlo Project uniqueness, importance, and public exposureo Success criteria salience and consensuso Lack of budgetary pressureo Avoidance of initial overoptimism and conceptual difficulties Their findings bear out the importance of having a clear knowledge of the managerial challenges involved when implementing projects. These findings have been reinforced by other research that has examined a set of both successful and unsuccessful projects across their life cycle.The findings of such research are intriguing because of the importance they place on the managerial and human behavioral aspects of project management for project success. As shows, regardless of whether the project studied was a success or failure, the factors that were of highest importance demonstrate some clear similarities. Issues such as leadership, top management support, team and personal motivation, and client support were consistently linked with project success, suggesting once again that an understanding of the project management process is keenly important for determining the likelihood of a projects successful outcome.One of the key recurring problems, however, with making wider use of nontechnical information as a method for controlling projects and assessing their ongoing status lies in the question of measurement. Although financial and schedule data can be easily acquired and are relatively easy to interpret, measuring human processes such as motivation level, leadership, top management support, and so forth is highly problematic. As a result, even though several project management theorists have accepted the argument for inclusion of human process factors in assessing the status of ongoing projects, there has been little agreement as to how best to make such assessments, interpret the results, and use the findings in a prescriptive manner to improve the project processes.The work of Pinto and Slevin addresses the shortcomings with behavioral assessments of project management processes. They formulated the Project Implementation Profile $($PIP$),$ a $10-$factor instrument that assesses the performance of the project team with respect to $10$ critical success factors; that is$,$ those factors they found to be predictive of project success. The advantage of the PIP is that it allows project teams to formally assess their performance on the ongoing project, allowing for midcourse correction and improvement of the management process itself. The $10$ critical success factors represent an important, supplemental source of information on the projects status. Coupled with other types of evaluation and control information supplied through the tracking of cost and schedule variance against the project baseline, project teams can develop a comprehensive vision of the projects status throughout its development. CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTOR DEFINITIONSThe $10$ critical success factors identified by Pinto and Slevin in formulating the Project Implementation Profile $($PIP$)$ instrument are $(1)$ project mission, $(2)$ top management support, $(3)$ project plans and schedules, $(4)$ client consultation, $(5)$ personnel, $(6)$ technical tasks, $(7)$ client acceptance, $(8)$ monitoring and feedback, $(9)$ communication, and $(10)$ troubleshooting. Each of these factors is discussed in more detail in the text that follows.Project mission, the first factor, relates to the purpose for the project. Project success is predicated on the importance of clearly defining objectives as well as ultimate benefits to be derived from the project. Many times, the initial stage of project management consists of a feasibility decision: Are the objectives clear and can they succeed? Project mission refers to a condition in which the objectives of the project are clear and understood, not only by the project team involved but also by the other departments in the organization. The project manager must be concerned with clarification of objectives, as well as achieving broad belief in the congruence of the objectives with overall organizational objectives.Top management support, the second factor, has long been considered of great importance in distinguishing between ultimate success and failure. Project managers and their teams not only are dependent upon top management for authority, direction, and support, but also are the conduit for implementing top managements plans or goals for the organization. Furthermore, if the project is being developed for an internal audience $($one within the company$),$ the degree of management support for a project will lead to significant variations in the degree of acceptance or resistance to that project or product.The fourth factor is client consultation. The client is anyone who ultimately will be using the product of the project, either as a customer outside the company or as a department within the organization. Increasingly, the need for client consultation has been recognized as important in attempting system implementation; indeed, the degree to which clients are personally involved in the implementation process correlates directly with variations in their support for projects. It is important to identify the clients for the project and accurately determine if their needs are being met.The fifth factor, personnel, includes recruitment, selection, and training of project team members. An important but often overlooked aspect of the implementation process concerns the nature of the personnel involved. In many situations, personnel for the project team are chosen with less than full regard for the skills necessary to actively contribute to implementation success. The personnel factor is concerned with developing an implementation team with the ability and commitment to perform their functions.Technical tasks, the sixth factor, refers to the necessity of having not only the required numbers of personnel for the implementation team but also ensuring that they possess the technical skills and the technology and technical support needed to perform their tasks. It is important that the people managing a project understand the technology involved. In addition, adequate technology must exist to support the system. Without the necessary technology and technical skills, projects quickly disintegrate into a series of miscues and technical errors.The seventh factor, client acceptance, refers to the final stage in the project development process, at which time the overall efficacy of the project is to be determined. In addition to client consultation at an earlier stage in the system implementation process, it remains of ultimate importance to determine whether the clients for whom the project has been initiated will accept it$.$ Too often, project managers make the mistake of believing that if they handle the other stages of the implementation process well, the client $($whether internal or external to the organization$)$ will accept the resulting system. In fact, client acceptance is a stage in the project life cycle process that must be managed like any other.The eighth factor, monitoring and feedback, refers to the project control process by which key personnel receive feedback at each stage of the project implementation on how the project is progressing compared to initial projections. Making allowances for adequate monitoring and feedback mechanisms gives the project manager the ability to anticipate problems, to oversee corrective measures, and to ensure that no deficiencies are overlooked. Project managers need to emphasize the importance of constantly monitoring and fine$-$tuning project development; tracking control charts and Earned Value Management are excellent examples of the techniques and types of monitoring and control mechanisms necessary to develop a project.Communication, the ninth factor, is not only essential within the project team itself, butas we discussed regarding stakeholder managementis also vital between the team and the rest of the organization as well as with clients. Communication refers both to feedback mechanisms and to the necessity of exchanging information with both clients and the rest of the organization concerning the projects capabilities, the goals of the project, changes in policies and procedures, status reports, and so forth. Therefore, channels of communication are extremely important in creating an atmosphere for successful project implementation.Troubleshooting is the tenth and final factor of the model. Problem areas exist in almost every project development. The measure of a successful project is not the avoidance of problems, but taking the correct steps once problems develop. Regardless of how carefully the implementation effort is initially planned, it is impossible to foresee every trouble area or problem that can possibly arise. As a result, the project manager must include mechanisms in the implementation plan for recognizing problems and for troubleshooting them when they arise. Such mechanisms make it easier not only to react to problems as they arise, but also to foresee and possibly forestall potential problem areas in the implementation process. Success Drivers and Inhibitors Stage Successful Projects Factors Stage Failed Projects FactorsFormation Formation Top management support Team Clear objectives Motivation Formation Personal ambitionFormation Unmotivated team Poor leadership Technical limitations Funding problemsBuildup Team motivation Personal motivation Conflict in objectives Top management support Technical expertiseBuildup Unmotivated team Leadership problems Poor top management support Technical problemsMain Phase Technological advantage Team motivation Personal motivation Client support Top management support Main Phase Unmotivated team Poor top management support Deficient procedures Closeout Personal motivation Team motivation Top management supportCloseout Poor control Poor financial support