What is your most important project management metric and why?
To help you manage projects based on metrics, we asked CEOs and business leaders this question for their best insights. From four week cycles to schedule variance, there are several examples of metrics that may help you manage projects efficiently for your organization.
Here are 7 examples of project management metrics:
- Four Week Cycles
- Idle Time
- Customer Satisfaction
- Cost Performance Index
- Productivity
- Return On Investment
- Schedule Variance
Four Week Cycles
I’m a huge proponent of working in four-week cycles. During monthly one-on-one meetings with managers and department heads, we regularly establish “must-do” items for leaders to complete before we meet again, and label other tasks as “should-dos” and “could-dos.” This approach outlines priorities for the month. At the start of the following meeting, we revisit those vital items to gauge success, before repeating the process and allocating tasks for the next month. This technique breaks work down into blocks and provides a focus that helps keep projects on track and progressing.
Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding
Idle Time
Apart from the deadline, the most critical metric is idle time, as it is something project managers have the most significant impact on. While delivery delays can be related to changing project scope, the time when the project is not worked on is almost always preventable and rarely adds any value. Usually, idle time results from blurry handover processes and poor information sharing procedures. They are much easier and more cost-effective to address than complex contingency and backup plans.
Michael Sena, SENACEA
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is an important project management metric that I follow since the very beginning of my business. Customers are and shall be the reason for the success journey of any business and so, the priority of focus should always revolve around the customers. That way, one could easily get an analysis of how they are going with the current strategies and the further improvements that are to be made.
Timothy Woods, Carnivore Style
Cost Performance Index
While Gross Profit Margin and ROI often get all the glory, to me Cost Performance Index (CPI) is just as equally important. This cost-efficiency metric divides the value of the work performed (i.e. earned value) by the actual cost it took to complete it. In short, the formula is: CPI = Earned Value (EV) / Actual Cost (AC). This is an essential metric for accurate budget forecasting as it allows a PM to quickly assess where things stand financially in relation to work done thus far.
Thus, a result above 1 demonstrates that the project is outpacing the budget which is ideal. 1 shows that the budget is in complete sync with the project and is still good. However, less than 1 is a warning sign showing that the project is lagging and currently over the budget.
Peter Bryla, ResumeLab
Productivity
Our most important project management metric is productivity by and large. With how custom orders work, keeping production at optimum performance ensures the largest benefit from completed projects. Optimum productivity makes cost measurement easier to archive too. Sticking to a budget and projected output numbers keeps everything more neat and organized.
Kevin Callahan, Flatline Van Co.
Return On Investment
An analysis of ROI determines the efficiency of a project and helps inform future project management styles. For example, in theory, a budget increase should indicate an increase in performance. You know it’s time to restrategize if your high-budget project resulted in low or similar results to previous lower-budget projects. Use ROI to determine and perfect strategies within project management.
Amrita Saigal, Kudos
Schedule Variance
When you’re working on a big project, there are a lot of metrics to consider conjointly. One of the essential metrics in our team is ‘schedule variance.’ As we are working on diverse projects simultaneously, it is easy to give priority to one over others and get behind schedule. We regularly track the difference between the cost of completed work and scheduled work. With this metric, we manage to work on several projects without losing track of their schedules.
Georgi Todorov, ThriveMyWay
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