LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Ref: Nieto-Rodriguez, A. (2026). The Success Illusion: Why “On Time and On Budget” Tells You Almost Nothing; Reimagining Project Management for a New Era, series article 8, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue VIII, August. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/pmwj167-Aug2026-Nieto-Rodriguez-The-Success-Illusion.pdf
26 August 2026
Dear Editor,
I agree wholeheartedly with the central thesis of Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez’s recent article focusing on the value of a project’s benefits when judging whether or not it has been a success. A project is only potentially worthwhile if the value of its outcome exceeds the value of the resources that are required for its delivery. As project managers, we should thus accept that the value of our projects’ benefits should exceed their delivery costs and act accordingly. Realising this is an antidote to the temptation to fixate on the process of project delivery to the exclusion of all else.
However, I would like to add another reason why drawing conclusions from a simple comparison between a project’s outcome and its cost objective is often inappropriate. To illustrate the point, we could consider the case of two project managers being asked to deliver the same project, one with a budget of £240,000 and the other with a budget £930,000. If their projects are both delivered at a final cost of £840,000, which one would be considered to have done the better job? The first would have overspent by almost 300% and, no doubt, be labelled as having failed. In contrast, the second would have returned £90,000 to the project’s grateful sponsors. You might think that no project could be authorised with such different estimates. But you would be wrong; these numbers are simply disguised values taken from the 2012 London Olympic Games.
When the 2012 Olympiad was awarded to London in 2005, the estimated net cost stood at £2.4b. In March 2007, the UK Government revised the budget upwards to a figure of £9.3b. This included a contingency fund of £2.7b. The size of the contingency fund alone thus became higher than the original estimate! I remember watching the BBC current affairs programme Newsnight shortly after this, in which the Sports Minister, Richard Caborn, was asked why the estimated cost had risen by so much. His explanation was charmingly simple. The earlier costing had been designed to win the bid!
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To read entire Letter to the Editor, click here
How to cite this work: Hopkinson, M. (2026). On Project Benefits, Success and Value, Letter to the Editor, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/pmwj168-Sep2026-Hopinson-on-benefits-success-vale-letter-to-editor.pdf
