How Project Managers Can Use Critical Success Factors to Achieve Strategic Goals

Have you ever really stopped to think about why one organization might be more successful than another? While many factors go into success, having clear strategic goals plays a big role. 

Goals spark motivation, challenge us to push beyond our perceived capabilities, and encourage collaboration and team unity. The key to achieving strategic goals often comes down to breaking them into tangible pieces for teams, individuals, and projects.

According to the Dominican University of California, people who write down goals, share them, and send progress updates can succeed close to 75% of the time.

As project managers, it’s our job to understand what success means at a higher level and then translate those criteria at the project and team levels.

That’s where critical success factors come in. They’re the tangible pieces you must check off at the project level to support the overall organizational goals.

Using critical success factors in project management

Critical success factors (or CSFs) are key areas you must focus on and deliver to achieve a larger goal. CSFs can be created at the department, program, or project level and often come together to drive progress toward the organization’s strategic mission or goals.

As project managers, we work with managers, leaders, and the larger project management team to identify these critical factors within individual projects and across portfolios. 

I like to think of CSFs as my guiding principles that lead to how I do my work and where to put my focus. Having clear CSFs helps me:

• Make more complex decisions 
• See how my work impacts the larger organization
• Focus on my own professional growth
• Achieve my project goals and outcomes

Since CSFs are usually high-level targets, they don’t necessarily come with instructions for applying them. That means there’s a lot of gray area, leaving you room to implement different tactics for different projects. (I enjoy that flexibility but know it can be daunting for those who feel more comfortable with clear direction.)

Critical success factors vs key performance indicators

Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure the impact of your work for each critical success factor, with a focus on metrics and data.

CSFs and KPIs work hand-in-hand quite nicely. For example, if your CSF is to improve internal project communication, your KPI could be to increase team satisfaction around communication by 10% from project to project.

Examples of critical success factors with KPIs

Let’s look at a few practical examples of critical success factors so you can see how they might support an organization’s annual goals and be measured by KPIs. (Note: Not all company goals will trickle down to the project manager’s role.)

Why critical success factors matter

As project managers, we occupy a unique position as client liaison, team leader, and controller of scope, budget, and timeline. That means our decisions—and how we approach our project—have a big impact on success for both the project and the organization.

Choosing to engage in a process to set CSFs—identifying the goal, sharing it, breaking it down into actionable parts, and so on—significantly increases your ability to succeed. Let's explore some of those valuable outputs.

Clear direction

Most project managers love having clear direction from the top. Having a clear north star gives you the ability to:

• Prioritize projects, special requests, and tasks
• Make tough decisions between two choices
• Guide your process, communication style, and tool use

CSFs reassure you the organization will have your back on these choices. This is extremely helpful when you’re knee-deep in a complicated project or underwater with too many projects on your plate. 

Resource utilization

Clear critical success factors can guide you in planning and utilizing your project resources. Your CSFs should help you:

• Determine when you can ask for more staff and when you need to make do with what you have
• Weigh how your team can spend time in certain areas—and not others—to increase client satisfaction, innovate as an organization, or help individuals grow professionally.
• Decide when you should try out new tools.

Having this clarity is especially important considering 44% of project managers say a lack of resources is one of their top challenges. 

Team consistency 

Being aligned on CSFs enables you to create a consistent approach to your process, tools, and decision-making. This sets clear expectations for the entire team and creates a collaborative synergy that produces positive outcomes with less confusion.

Visibility leading to accountability 

Once defined, share your CSFs with the larger teams so everyone knows how your project management team plans to approach the work. Include a feedback process to ensure others affected by these decisions buy into them.

Both the project managers and the team will be held accountable to meet your CSFs (or support the team’s ability to meet them). This builds a common vision and open accountability to support this direction.

When to define critical success factors

Critical success factors should be defined during 2 key planning cycles: annual planning and project planning.

Annual planning

Most organizations take time each year to realign their annual goals with the long-term strategic mission and vision. This is a great time for your project management office (PMO) to redefine your critical success factors so everyone’s on the same page about:

• What each CSF means
• How they’ll flow through your work (process, communication, documents, etc.)
• Whether you’re missing anything (like tools or staff) that would help you succeed

Project planning

You should also revisit critical success factors at the start of each project. While your CSFs should be relatively consistent from project to project, a simple refresher (with some fine-tuning) can help your team:

• See which ones connect more closely with the project—and  goals—at hand
• Ensure you have KPIs to measure your CSFs for this specific project

Establish CSFs at the beginning of the project when you’re creating your project brief, and review them either before (or just after) the client pre-kick-off meeting.

How to identify your critical success factors

The process for identifying your critical success factors will depend a bit on your team size, structure, and the information you receive during your planning meeting. 

You might get the company’s goals wrapped in a pretty bow, or you could be left digging through a slide deck to find them. You might be part of a large PMO team or the only project manager in your company

Whatever your situation, pick a process that works best for you. Here are some steps to consider including: 

1. Understand your organization’s strategy and goals 

Make sure you identify and clarify the organization’s short- and long-term strategies. If the vision and goals aren’t clear, ask questions. It’s not uncommon to have unmeasurable or vague goals.

Ask questions until you understand how the organization’s goals connect to your project management work. It’s important to know where you fit into the bigger picture and how you’ll be held accountable

This is also a great time to let leadership know where your team can make a difference. You just might surprise them with some new ideas.

2. Prioritize and focus

After you understand the goals, you’ll likely need to prioritize them. Goals are often lofty and numerous to stretch our teams—but too many goals can impede focus and overwhelm your team.

Discuss areas where your team can make the most impact at this level. The goal might be something you’re close to achieving. It might require low-level effort. It could also be something that’s hard but meets multiple goals.

3. Create a consensus

No matter what process you use, you’ll likely have additional team members who need to be aware of—and agree with—your critical success factors. You must rely on the entire team to meet your CSFs, so building alignment now is important.

Bring all key stakeholders together to discuss:

• Why you chose these critical success factors
• How they tie back to the organization’s strategy
• How you plan to measure the success or failure of each CSF

If possible, bring any past project data with you. I do this, and it helps paint the picture for my team.

4. Ensure capacity and manage risks

After defining your CSFs, make sure you and your team have the capacity to meet them. This includes:

• Having the right staff in the right seats
• Having access to the tools you need
• Making sure leadership is ready to support your plan along the way

Creating a risk management plan can help you identify potential roadblocks and document strategies for addressing them.

5. Set and track metrics

If you haven’t already, make sure you set clear metrics to measure your CSFs. These metrics—your KPIs—need to be clear so everyone knows what success looks like and whether you accomplish it.

This might mean adding a post-project client survey to your process or building a dashboard of hours and budgets from past projects to compare to the upcoming year's projects.

Whatever you do, don’t skip this step! Not only does data give you amazing insight into your work. Those in leadership live by it.

6. Establish reporting and accountability

One trap many project managers fall into is setting CSFs and never revisiting them. That’s why it’s important to create a visual dashboard that shows the following details:

• Critical success factors
• Annual goals connected to them
• KPIs
• Potential risks and your mitigation plan

Review this document quarterly to ensure you’re on the right track and let everyone know you’re holding people accountable. 

Consistent visibility is critical in this process. I recommend using a project management tool to document and track the KPIs tied to each critical success factor. 

In TeamGantt, you can set up a board with organizational goals as columns, then add critical success factors as cards below each goal. For this example, we used labels to tag each CSF with related projects.

You could use task notes on each CSF card to capture KPIs and document the final outcomes.

7. Connect CSFs at the project level

Once your plan is set, determine which CSFs make sense to incorporate with this project and how you plan to track those outcomes.

Be sure to consider whether anything about your project goals, scope, or constraints needs to change to meet these CSFs. Ask yourself these questions, and adjust accordingly:

• How might my CSFs change the project process or approach?
• Should I add to my project to meet a CSF?
• Do any project goals or stakeholder needs contradict a CSF?
• Could any project constraints (budget, stakeholder access, timeline, etc.) hurt our ability to meet a CSF?

Can I adjust my project goals to incorporate my CSFs more effectively?

8. Conduct a post-project evaluation

Don’t forget to meet with the team at the end of the project to reflect on how the process went. Looking at data and learning together helps the next project run more smoothly.

Here are a few questions you’ll want to answer:

• Did you meet your project goals?
• Did they lead to successful CSFs and KPIs?
• What can you do better next time?
• What successes should you celebrate together? 

Top 5 critical success factors in project management

Here are the top 5 critical success factors I believe project managers must address to meet organizational goals. While not an exhaustive list, it’s a solid place to start.

1. Project management leadership

As project managers, one of the biggest things we overlook is our own ability to impact the project both positively and negatively.

As the team leader who ultimately makes all decisions around timeline, budget, and scope, your influence is huge. You must:

• Set the tone and mood of the project. Bring your A-game and energy to each meeting and micro-interaction.
• Avoid going on autopilot. Each project and client is unique and needs something special from you. After all, the ship isn’t going to steer itself!
• Provide feedback. You don’t have to be a designer or developer to give amazing feedback. You’re the voice of the client and scope—and also another user.
• Be proactive, not reactive. Work to answer questions before they’re asked. Book meetings before schedules are full. Identify issues before they arise. This will build trust and mitigate potential problems.
• Get help. If you’re drowning in too much work, say something. You can’t lead the project to success if you don’t have the bandwidth to do it.

2. Transparent and consistent communication

Over the years, I’ve learned the biggest reason clients—and project teams—panic is because they don’t know what should be happening when. They feel like they’re in the dark and worry about what they’re responsible for. 

That’s why it’s critical to set a clear standard for when people will get information and what form it will come in. This communication plan might include:

• Scheduling regular project meetings to keep everyone informed
• Sharing meeting notes with a quick recap at the top for easy scanning
• Presenting weekly budget and project updates that show whether your team is on track and what you plan to do about it if you’re not
• Showing the full project timeline—not a truncated short-term view—so everyone understands the full scope of work and how they fit in
• Storing all documents in a single, accessible place so it’s easy for anyone to find what they need
• Sharing the to-do list with your internal team every Monday on Slack and highlighting key client updates
• Scheduling weekly internal document review meetings

3. Tools

The tools you introduce into a project can have a big impact on the client’s reactions and how well you communicate and use your  time. Consider these questions when selecting tools for your project:

• Are your internal teams already comfortable using this tool? 
• How will the tool flow from one project phase to another?
• Is this the right project to try out something new?
• Is it easy to use and accessible for all skill levels?
• Will it support visual learners?
• Will it solve a problem or just create extra “noise” and work?
• Are you using too many tools on one project?
• How will it be integrated into meetings? 
• Will this tool enhance or hinder communication?
• Has the client already adopted a useful tool? (If so, I recommend working in their environment.)

As a project manager, I lean toward fewer, simpler tools to provide a more personal and streamlined experience for the client. For example, I use a good resource management tool like TeamGantt to store files, track project scope, and manage timelines and screen-share the work to collaborate together in workshops.

Whatever your plan, remember, tools are aids—not replacements—for strong communication and relationships.

4. Stakeholder management

Managing stakeholders is a critical skill for any project manager. No two projects or clients are alike, so tailor your approach to the people involved. Start by asking yourself:

• Who are the core stakeholders who will be part of all project meetings and deliverable reviews?
• Which other stakeholders have an interest in this project? What will their involvement be? 
• How will leadership be involved? What does success look like to them?
• Will any external users and experts be involved? If so, how?
• When and how should you include these additional voices?
• Should you allocate more budget to this involvement?
• Should certain stakeholders be included at specific points?
• Do you need to prepare special documents for any stakeholders?
• Do you need to set any limits on stakeholder involvement?

Don’t forget about internal stakeholders! Consider ways to keep teammates motivated and on the same page. And make sure your manager stays in the loop so they’ll be up-to-speed when an elevated risk needs mitigation.

5. Risk management

Risk management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and responding to issues that might arise in your project. Each one of these pesky items could derail your project and keep you from achieving your critical success factors.

The tricky thing is, these problems could include anything, and they could be coming from different sources. It’s important to identify project risks in the initial planning phase to create a clear action plan for dealing with issues before they arise.

Here are some key analysis areas and guiding questions to help you and your team uncover potential risks.

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After you’ve identified your project’s specific risks, create a contingency plan. Be sure to share it with your team, manager, and client to get everyone on board and gather good feedback on how to improve the plan.

Set every project up for success

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You’ll have all the features you need to ensure projects finish on time and under budget—from visual timelines and team collaboration to baseline reports and resource management. Best of all, it’s wrapped up in a simple and intuitive interface everyone will love. 😍

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