2.10. THE MANY FACES OF SUCCESS

Historically, the definition of success has been meeting the customer's expectations regardless of whether or not the customer is internal or external. Success also includes getting the job done within the constraints of time, cost, and quality. Using this standard definition, success is defined as a point on the time, cost, quality/performance grid. But how many projects, especially those requiring innovation, are accomplished at this point?

Very few projects are ever completed without trade-offs or scope changes on time, cost, and quality. Therefore, success could still occur without exactly hitting this singular point. In this regard, success could be defined as a cube, such as seen in Figure 2-13. The singular point of time, cost, and quality would be a point within the cube, constituting the convergence of the critical success factors (CSFs) for the project.