PROJECTRETROSPECTIVESEVALUATINGPROJECTSUCCESSFAILUREAND.pdfVIP

PROJECT RETROSPECTIVES: EVALUATING PROJECT SUCCESS, FAILURE, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN PROJECT RETROSPECTIVES: EVALUATING PROJECT SUCCESS, FAILURE, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN 1 Executive Summary R. Ryan Nelson University of Virginia The fact that the majority of IT projects fail on at least one measure of success, and that billions of dollars in project waste is reported each year, suggests that there is a critical need for improving the way we manage these projects. The sobering truth is that the secret to more successful project management has been right in front of us the whole time – learning from the past. A retrospective (a.k.a. a postmortem) is a formal method for evaluating project performance, extracting lessons learned, and making recommendations for the future. A comprehensive retrospective considers three process-based measures of project success: whether it came in on sche dule (time), whether it came in on budget (cost), and whether the requirements were met (product). It also considers three outcome-based measures of success: whether the resulting product or service was actually use