12 Days of Questions - replace with the header image

Welcome back to Day 2 of the 12 days of questions

The second question every sponsor should be able to answer is: What defines done?

Every project has a start and a finish. How do you know, with confidence, that you’ve actually finished.

What is the project is accountable for delivering? What shows that everything is complete and the team can move on to the next thing or all go home.

It might be that a new process is running in the operation, or a train has been delivered into service, or a new organisational structure is in place.

The focus here is the what, not the why.

Question 1 was about purpose and value – why the project exists and why it matters. This question is about what the project will put into the hands of the business.

This is what I call the delivery metric.

It is a measure of completion. Not to be confused with the value metric.

For example, a project might deliver a new customer management system that is live and in use. That is the delivery. That can be measured.

Increased sales may be the reason for doing the project, the value metric. But sales performance can be influenced by many factors beyond the project’s control.

A good delivery metric defines what is being delivered. It should be clear, testable, and largely independent of how the world changes around the project.

So the second question every sponsor should be able to answer is: What defines done?