KPI Metrics for Project Management
Managing a project can be difficult occasionally or right throughout the entire project’s life cycle. There is always a lot of pressure on the project manager and the persons involved to make the project succeed. Additionally there are so many factors that can affect a project’s process which can lead to failure. A popular tool or technique persons tend to use in project management is key performance indicators.
Key performance indicators are basically metrics you are going to put in place to help you track the progress of the different processes of a project. This will help you to see how well the different performances are performing. As a result of that it will assist you in seeing areas of inefficiency that you can then improve on.
A lot of project managers have used key performance indicators in their projects and they have found it to be quite useful.
One of the main benefits of using key performance indicators is that it helps you to cut cost. The reason being is because a lot of times inefficient processes will come with a lot of cost to operate. So by spotting these processes and find new and interesting ways to improve them overtime your processes will become more efficient.
You many key performance indicators you can set in place to help manage your project.
Below you can see a good list of them:
Increase the rate of our return on investment by 5% in 6 months
Decrease the defect rate for our products by at least 10% in 12 months
Reduce the number of missed milestones by 3% in 10 months
Decrease the rate of our overdue project task
Increase the rate of participation from the different team members on the team
Lower the cost of the different operations by 15% in 7 months
Decrease the rate of work stoppages by 5% in order to for us to be more productive in 6 months
Increase the percentage of task completed properly
Decrease the project budget by 4% in 6 months by making the operations perform more efficiently
Decrease our cost variance by 10%
Increase the rate of our resource usage by 7%
The examples of key performance indicators shown above are just some out of many you can set in your organization. When you are creating key performance indicators there are a few things you must keep in mind.
Make certain that your metrics can be attained in the given time frame that is already set. So you must set realistic expectations of when you are going to achieve a certain objective. Also ensure that your metrics can be easily measured as well.
The easier it is to be measured, is the easier it can be tracked.
In summary setting up key performance indicators in your project can make it easier for you to measure and manage certain processes.
Key performance indicators can also help in eliminating the risk that usually comes with your project. It will not eliminate it completely. But it will certainly reduce it down to a manageable level that you can work with.