Measuring, controlling and improving: project management indicators

In the last few years, companies have been experiencing several revolutionary changes, going from a stable protected situation to highly competitive and more open environments. This situation of constant transformation of the business environment makes companies have a clear way of analyzing and evaluating their processes to keep and increase their participation in the market under these circumstances. 

Measuring performance can be defined as a series of actions oriented towards assessing, adjusting, and regulating the activities of a company. In the business world, there are several definitions of it; however, it's not an easy task because this concept encompasses both physical and logical elements, depending on the managers' vision, the hierarchical structure, and the support systems of the company. 

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When we talk about a management indicator, we mean the information that shows what were the consequences of the actions taken in the past. The idea is that these indicators can help you measure, control, and improve the project action plan you will follow at present and in the future. 

It's important that the indicators in project management show true and reliable information since, otherwise, the situation analysis won't be right. On the other hand, if indicators are ambiguous or inaccurate, their interpretation will be complicated. 

Project management indicators can be developed if a project or organization is successful or if a company is achieving its goals. The executive manager of a company is who usually provides the management indicators which are used to evaluate performance and results. 

What are the characteristics of project management indicators?

• Means, tools, or mechanisms to evaluate if the strategic goals are being met. 
• They are a managing measurement unit that allows you to evaluate the performance of a company according to its goals and responsibilities with its reference groups.  
• They provide information to analyze the performance of any area in the company and check the achievement of goals according to the results. 
• They detect and foresee deviations in the achievement of goals. 
• The analysis of indicators leads you to create alerts, and not lose its path if the company is correctly aligned to the plan. 

How can you develop project management indicators? 

If you don't measure what you do, you can't control it, and if you can't control it, you can't manage, and if you can manage your company, you can't improve. This is very important if you want your project to succeed because you will be able to establish deadlines and costs, knowing if they are met or not, and how to anticipate possible risks or deviations between what you've planned and what's done in reality at that time. 

First of all, you have to take into account the three pillars in a project: scope, time, and costs. The scope determines the goals of the project and it's one of the most important parts of management. If you can measure the scope of the project, you'll be able to evaluate the following activities to achieve the general goal. 

Time refers to the established deadlines for the project and costs to the necessary budget for carrying it out. To measure these processes as regards time and costs, using the correct management indicators will help you control the path of the project better as well as its possible risks, such as delays or cost increase. 

Basic management indicators you can implement to measure, control and improve your projects 

• Goal progress indicators: these indicators will measure the progress percentage of the general goal of the project (scope). They'll help you establish comparative parameters for the progress of tasks oriented to achieve the goal. From this general goal, secondary goals are detached and they complement it and nourish it so that more tasks are carried out; that is to say, smaller goals are met. 
• Time indicators (short and long term): just as progress indicators, time indicators measure the relationship between the expected deadline and the real one, so that you can establish the difference of time that makes a project delay. For example, if a project was expected to be carried out in a year and, then, the year passes by and the project is not over, this extra time will signal the difficulties you had during the process so you can look for ways of improving deadlines and avoid more delays. 
• Budget indicators: just as time and scope indicators, these indicators will help you identify budget leaks in comparison with the expected budget. If you had a delay in the deadline of a project, it's likely the costs will be higher because of that delay.
• Predictive indicators: they signal and anticipate the possible problems that may arise during the processes. This will allow you to be prepared for them; maybe you won't be able to avoid them but, at least, you can implement contingency measures to soften their effects. 
• Efficiency and effectiveness indicators: effectiveness analyzes if the expected results were achieved while efficiency shows if time, effort, and cost were managed properly to get those results. 
  
  

There's no clearly defined rule as regards which project management indicators are better since they depend a lot on the scope of the goals (how ambitious they are), the type of organization, the team members, the technologies, and the budget you have, among other factors. 

However, this guide can help you facilitate your project management tasks by going deeper into the indefinite parts or problems whose deviations are very likely to appear in the tasks that weren't correctly planned so you can get greater control of these processes and improve your results and time use. Everything is possible if you want to make it happen.