As a project manager, you cannot shoot darts in the dark. You need concrete, actionable data to know whether your project management methodologies and processes have taken you closer or farther away from your desired objectives.
It’s only when you conduct a post-project evaluation that you will be able to determine how far you have been able to achieve your objectives and rule out your project’s success or failure. Below are five reasons why the process holds immense importance in today’s consumer-savvy business world:
1. Process improvement
“Failures are the pillars of success” is an adage that applies aptly to project managers, who often operate on a trial-and-error basis. It’s unreasonable to expect project managers to be all-knowing and incapable of making mistakes. When you do a post-project evaluation, you get to know why your process worked or didn’t work out. You get an opportunity to identify loopholes in your processes and become aware of the steps that can close them.
2. Value creation
The ultimate goal of post-project evaluation is to create the utmost value for clients or customers. With post-project evaluation, you get clarity of the ways in which your organization can create maximum value for your prospects. No matter what your business is, you can offer something that your prospects want and need—only if you know how to evaluate your project the right way. When you evaluate, your offering will be in line with the market demand and you stand a chance to grab a favorable edge over your competitors
3. Informed decisions
Post-project evaluation generates not only quantitative but also qualitative data, which can help organizational members to make data-back, logical decisions. The evaluation process may vary from company to company, but there’s no denying the fact that each process provides useful insights to project managers. All these insights, when evaluated and assessed properly, can help you make more informed decisions and plan better for the future.
4. Better accountability
Post-project evaluation is like a postmortem of all decisions and actions that have led a project to a certain state—be it success or failure. When conducted properly, the process can help you create a framework that lays down clear responsibilities to achieve the desired performance. It encourages clarity and accountability, as well as gives you a proper direction towards continuous improvement.
5. Proper budget allocation
Last but not the least, post-project evaluation is a crucial step in the overall project cycle because it allows project managers to gauge their financial allocation. Each project runs on a budget, and a proper evaluation process can help you allocate your budget to your project’s processes more judiciously. It can reduce any wasteful expenditure of money, time, and effort by withdrawing resources from redundant processes and channeling them towards more useful ones.
