How to Measure Project Manager Productivity

Leadership is an important part of effective project management.

Project management has significantly grown in importance in organizations. As a project's leader, the project manager is a key component of the success of a project. In evaluating the effectiveness of a project manager, build milestone and final-stage evaluations into the project that gauge quality, time and budget management successes and failures. Project management evaluations also identify lessons that might be learned by both the project manager and the project team.

Instructions

1. Determine whether the project's penultimate goals and objectives have been fulfilled. This might be evaluated by performing qualitative assessments of the project's targeted clients or end-users, using tools such as surveys or focus groups. Failures might be due to the project's objectives not conforming to the standards of SMART -- an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable and Time-limited goals and objectives. Evaluate the work breakdown structure alongside the project goals and objectives to determine whether they illustrated effective and efficient strategies and tactics.

2. Assess the project manager's time-management skills on a project by reviewing estimated time-scales for project milestones against actual deliverables. Review control mechanisms developed for the project, such as progress reports. Evaluate milestone charts such as PERT diagrams, Gantt charts and critical path methods that might have been developed by the project manager. This will show estimated stages of achievement toward the project objectives that can be compared to actual delivery times.

3. Monitor the adherence to the project budget. A good project budget is designed to monitor costs while the project is in progress, which is one of the key functions of a project manager. Project management requires sound record keeping, which includes details about the financial transactions during the course of the project. To assess the effectiveness of a project manager in managing a budget, review the financial documentation against project budgets. Project budget underestimations or the failure to stay within budget limits might result in the project no longer achieving the cost-benefits initially established for it.

4. Review the leadership skills of the project manager. Evaluate instructional documentation or training material developed for the project team. Conduct a survey of the project team members to gain their perspectives on the skills they may have gained in working on the project and to generally assess key components of the project. Determine what tasks or procedures each participant believes could be managed more effectively.

References

• Carnegie Mellon University; Cost Control, Monitoring and Accounting; Chris Hendrickson; 1998
• The University of Tennessee Knoxville: Growing as a Research Professional: Project Management