To be a successful professional you should follow the Kaizen principle, or continuous improvement.
Best practice program and project management methodologies follow the life-cycle of: Initiate or Concept > Plan > Execute or Deliver > Monitor and Review.
In my experience the last step often gets missed.
To be able to continuously improve means understanding whether you got the results expected, ie did you measure and report key performance indicators (KPIs)?
Kaizen refers to activities that lead to continuous improvement. The first requirement is measuring and reporting key metrics or KPIs.
Professionals should always be learning from experience and assessing whether the program or project yielded the desired result, and if not why not.
So the steps involve: setting up KPIs and data collection in the planning phase to monitor and report results on a regular basis, analysing the results, determining what worked and what didn’t work and learning from that experience to build in improvements into the next iteration of the program or project.
Large modern organisations set up specialised functions and units to plan and deliver programs and projects. This can lead to no-one having the oversight of the complete life-cycle process. Often the Monitor and Review phase is not specifically allocated or mandated.
In my view a core element of a successful professional is evaluating results, even if it is not part of a particular project responsibility, it is an essential part of professional practice.
It is also challenging if you are a consultant as you are constrained by the brief or contract and budget, and the Monitor and Review phase is usually not part of an engagement, particularly if you are only developing a plan or strategy.
Some transport examples
Future of Transport: Transport for NSW publishes a State Insights dashboard of future challenges, including drivers of transport demand, population, freight, public transport, passenger crowding, traffic congestion and road safety.
Transport agency: Washington State Department of Transportation publishes a comprehensive quarterly report: The Gray Notebook .
Virginia DOT dashboard reports on performance, safety, condition, projects etc.
Road safety: TMR Qld publishes weekly road crash statistics.
Traffic: here.com publishes a traffic dashboard.
Freight: Transport for NSW freight dashboard shows key road, rail and other performance measures.
Passenger transport: Public Transport Victoria monitor and report how train, tram and bus operators perform to make sure Victorian public transport meets your needs and expectations – daily, monthly and quarterly.
Cycling: TMR Qld produces the Queensland State of Cycling Report every two years.
