Glossary · Measurement
Project Review: How Agencies Learn from Completed Projects – Dr. Florian Bresler
In his dissertation, Dr. Florian Bresler, Munich, describes a learning loop in which the success of a project is evaluated and flows back to the enablers of an agency. He did not examine a review as a procedure in its own right. This entry shows what the study says about learning from projects and what can be derived from it as a review.
209
clients who rated a completed project
20
statements of the initial model on enablers and success
0.80
standardized weight of customer trust as a success measure
0.14
standardized weight of reputation gain
The learning loop in the model
The model takes a cycle from the EFQM: the enablers produce communication quality, success arises from it, and the evaluated success flows back to the enablers through organizational learning. The RADAR logic sets the rhythm. Results are defined, an approach is designed and implemented, then assessed and refined.
From the priority of internal interplay, the study derives that the enablers improve when insights from earlier projects flow continuously back into the work. Whether this succeeds depends, according to the study, on the willingness of the agency head to take up new market needs and ideas from the team.
What the study proposes in concrete terms
The dissertation proposes regular sessions. They deal with the wishes of customers and the concepts of competitors and lead to plans for turning new ideas into new offers. It does not prescribe a fixed form or a measuring procedure. A review after the end of a project is therefore a transfer that applies the idea of the session to a single project.
Whether such sessions work was not tested by the study. As a transfer, it makes sense to anchor learning in conversation rather than in archives: clients rated knowledge management best and it still showed no relationship with perceived quality, and the study regards the interplay inside the agency as more important than a dense net of suppliers and partners.
What a review can measure
The survey provides a pattern that can be scaled down. Clients rated a specific, completed project on a scale from 1 to 5. Two success measures remained in the final model: customer trust (0.80) and reputation gain (0.14). No significant relationship appeared for financial indicators (p = 0.24). The study names competition, the economy and the delayed effect of communication as reasons.
For a review this means: look first at the effect on trust and reputation, and do not make the return of a single project the yardstick.
The initial model grew out of 26 categories derived from the literature; after the preliminary study, 20 statements remained. A review needs only a fraction of them.
A lean procedure
The following steps are a derivation and not a finding of the study:
- Ask shortly after the project ends, and about exactly this project.
- Present a few statements on the same scale from 1 to 5, for instance on the trust of the target group, the reputation of the client and the collaboration with the agency head.
- Discuss the answers in a session with the agency head and the team.
- Record what will be done differently in the next project, and check on the one after that whether it works.
How far the review reaches
The study did not collect long-term effects; a review directly after the project says nothing about later effects. Satisfaction surveys also tend toward friendly judgments, and the ranking of statements is more telling than their absolute value. And the findings rest on the judgments of clients from the customer circles of two agency networks. The review is therefore an occasion for conversation within the team and with the client, not an evaluation of individuals and not proof of the effect over the long term.