Measuring Impact on Society
The Role of Key Performance Indicators in Project Management
- In social enterprises “Impact on Society” sits high on the list of desirable outcomes but how do know we are achieving this and to what extent?
- Project KPIs are measurable indicators that help to track a project’s performance.
KPIs are usually expressed as a metric, so that changes in performance over time can be monitored.
For instance project specific KPIs could be:
- Adherence to project schedule i.e. number of tasks achieved compared to those that where planned
- Estimate to project completion i.e. number of estimated resource hours left on the project compared to the number of hours left according to the schedule
- Cost variance
Research identifies three areas that KPIs could be developed from within social enterprises:
- Fairness, i.e. the ability to ensure access to products and services to vulnerable, disabled, elderly people, etc.
- Involvement, i.e. the ability to ensure the participation of the relevant stakeholders in the decision-making process
- Communication and transparency, i.e. the ability to inform the stakeholders about social enterprise activities
Additional reading about performance measurement for social enteprises can be found here.