Project Completion Rate: What It Is & How To Calculate It
Keeping Score Counts: Tracking project completion rates helps you assess performance, make informed decisions, and highlight both successes and areas needing improvement.
The Highs and Lows: A high completion rate can indicate quality performance, while a low rate could stem from managing complex projects—context matters in evaluating success.
Challenges Galore: Numerous external factors can skew project completion rates—context and adaptability are essential in project management.
Keeping track of project completion rate is crucial for project managers.
Having run hundreds of projects in my career and understanding the KPIs each needs to achieve to be considered complete is a skill I still work to hone every day.
Here’s why project completion rates are important, key challenges, and how to calculate it.
What Is Project Completion Rate?
Project completion rate is a key performance indicator (KPI) that helps organizations understand how well their project managers perform.
The project completion rate looks at the number of projects that are delivered both on time and within budget.
Why Is Project Completion Rate Important?
Like any other KPI that is measured, the project completion rate is important because it can provide insights into a project manager’s performance.
That said, a high completion rate doesn’t always mean a project manager is good, and a low completion rate doesn’t mean a project manager is bad.
For example, taking on a complex and risky project might mean it is not completed on time or within budget. Pausing and renegotiating the timing and budget might be the right thing.
A project manager who pressures and bullies their team, harming work-life balance and harmony, may complete more projects. But is that the kind of environment you want to work in or have your team working in daily?
As a project manager, is fostering a toxic, high-pressure environment truly how you want to lead your team forward?
So, while project completion rate can provide some valuable insight into a project manager’s performance, it is not the end of all of the KPIs. When evaluating a project manager, their explanation of completion rates reveals more than the number itself.
Challenges With Project Completion Rate
The reason I caution against using project completion rate as the metric for measuring a project manager’s abilities is that there are so many things that can impact it that are outside of the project manager’s control.
These can include but are not limited to:
- Losing funding midstream (e.g. losing government funding or a grant)
- Key stakeholders leaving the organization or withdrawing support
- Staffing issues
- Projects being under budgeted
- The scope or expectations are unreasonable, to begin with
- Software reaching the end of life
Project managers are frequently assigned work without participating in scoping or budget discussions, making completion rate evaluations potentially unfair.
For example, a project manager in a government agency with frozen budgets could be highly skilled but unable to complete projects.
How to Calculate Project Completion Rate
Calculating the project completion rate can be accomplished with an easy formula. It looks like this:
Number of projects completed/total number of projects started * 100 = project completion rate
For example, if this year I undertook 10 projects and completed 8 of them on time and within budget, I would have a project completion rate of 80%.
If you’re tracking completion rates annually, perform this calculation at the end of each year. Even if this is not required, it could be a good metric to include in a performance review. If nothing else, it's an interesting discussion point.
How Resource Management Factors Into Project Completion
Resource management can make or break your project completion rate. While there are many factors in whether or not a project can be completed, resources are one of the biggest pieces.
The resources you need to manage include time, budget, the team available to work on the project, required hardware and software, and even your team’s energy.
If you’ve been managing projects for any length of time, you know it’s pretty rare to have an overabundance of every resource you need for the project. You could easily achieve very high completion rates if unlimited time and money were always available for projects. But that is rarely the case, especially in this economy.
So, the next best thing we can do is proactively manage resources. When it comes to resource management, here are some of the most common levers you will have.
Time
Good time management can help you optimize the schedule even when your timeline is tight. This might look like proactively scheduling design reviews with key stakeholders or limiting the number of people who will give feedback. It can also include creating windows for revisions so the designer has enough time to implement feedback before the next round of reviews.
Energy
Like time, energy is not an unlimited resource. Having a team that is completely burned out is not going to help your project completion rate. Working with your client or stakeholders to prioritize work and minimize emergency scrambles can prevent your team from burning out.
Make sure team members are working reasonable hours and have time away from work to rest and recharge. If you notice a team member is showing signs of burnout or is taking longer to complete tasks they generally get done quickly, encourage them to take some time away to recharge.
Team members
Having the right team members is one of the most important levers for hitting your completion rate. A team that is inexperienced or that doesn’t work well together can easily hinder project progress.
Other common issues include being understaffed or having team members who are overbooked. Both of which can wreak havoc on project completion.
Budget
Pay close attention to how the project budget is spent, including team hours, meetings, hardware, and software expenses. If the remaining work is significant and the budget is tight, ensure the team and stakeholders understand the potential risks.
Ask about the possibility of a change order or budget increase to know if additional funds may be available later.
In my experience, this can be one of the hardest resources to manage, especially when the project budget is lower than it needs to be because the agency or organization agreed to take on the project for a fixed budget even though they knew going in that the budget was low.
I have seen this happen in slow periods, when developing new services, or because the leadership team wanted to say they worked with a specific client.
Equipment & software
Having the right equipment and software to complete any project is a key resource that must always be carefully managed. Even when building a website on an open-source platform, you still need plugins, subscriptions, and optimization tools like Google Analytics for proper functionality.
For mobile apps, have a variety of phones to test on. Making the necessary equipment available to the team at critical project stages can speed progress and ensure successful completion.
If you are purchasing software, try to budget for enough licenses for the number of users you have. Shared logins can sometimes stall progress.
Tools for Managing Project Completion Rate
You don’t have to manually track your project completion rates anymore. There are many resource management tools you can use to track the project pacing and budget as the work is completed. You can use these insights from the project to help with decision-making that will ultimately help increase your overall completion rate.
Here are some of the best resource management software tools currently available:
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