Project Success, Redefined: Value > Effort + Expense

The classic definition of project success is over. Delivering on time, within budget, at the agreed scope is no longer proof of success — it is a baseline, necessary but far from sufficient.

PMI's 2025 Project Success Research reports a global Net Project Success Score (NPSS) of 36 out of 100. Most projects are stamped “complete” while closing without producing real value. The field already knew this.

1) Why the old definition no longer works

The same study includes a striking number: only 37 percent of projects define and measure success up front ^[1]. The other 63 percent set out without knowing what they are measuring. That is why “we went live” cannot count as success; at best, it is a delivery signal.

On the ground this plays out predictably: a Canias go-live may hit its date, modules open, reports run. Three months later users are back on the old spreadsheet, the sponsor is asking “where is the return?”, and the technical delivery is a success while the business outcome is a failure.

Without trust, measurement loses its meaning. The number is right, but nobody owns it enough to stand in front of a decision.

2) Value is greater than effort and expense

PMI's 2025 research compresses success into one relationship: Value > Effort + Expense. If a project does not return more than the work and money that went in, it is not a success by definition. The classic time-scope-budget triangle is simply an input in this picture.

The most expensive mistake in the field is not noticing the effort that produces no value. A feature gets requested in fit-gap, built, tested, taken live; during hypercare nobody opens that screen. Effort was spent, cost was booked, value is zero. When this gap is not visible in real time, project management starts mistaking effort for success.

Fit-gap and hypercare are siblings for exactly this reason: one says what is actually needed, the other says what is actually used. If the two do not talk, the project reduces to effort.

Without ownership, a feature does not produce value. Users do not open a tool they did not help shape.

3) Openness at the steering table

The third striking finding: customer and end-user perception influences project success roughly twice as much as other factors (around 29 percent) ^[1]. Reading this as “customer satisfaction matters” is too shallow. The real message is different: the sponsor's openness to hearing the truth shifts the trajectory of a project more than almost anything else.

If a sponsor can ask “do we really want this?” or “will this go-live actually produce value?” at the steering table, the project still has enough trust to correct itself. When that question cannot be asked in the room, it gets asked outside — in corridors, over coffee. Before long, the decision itself is taken outside.

When decisions are taken outside, the steering table is only tracking the calendar. A calendar-tracking table does not run a project; it reads a project report.

Without openness, decisions are made off the table. The table is ceremonial; the influence is elsewhere.

4) The one who finishes wins — but only if they know what was finished

So what makes a project a success? The answer sits where three anchors meet.

• Measurement: did we write down what we count as value, at the start? This is where PMI's 37 percent lands.
• Ownership: is the user's own work inside the output? If not, effort is flowing past without producing value.
• Openness: is the sponsor open to hearing the truth at the steering table? If not, the project cannot self-correct.

Without all three, go-live passes as a date and value never locks in. With all three, hypercare becomes the period when value settles into place and the organization actually sees the return on its investment.

The one who finishes wins — because finishing is not merely completing; it is locking the value in.

Source

[1] Project Management Institute, 2025 Project Success Research. NPSS, measurement ratio and customer-influence figures are reported in that study.

Related reading

Going live in ERP projects, What is hypercare?, ERP & PMO glossary, The human factor in ERP projects.