Success Criteria

Impact Projects
Introduction	What are Impact Projects?  |  Gateway
Impact project stages	Your mentor  |  The Proposal  |  Progressing the plan  |  Presenting and Evaluating
Impact project framework	How they work  |  The Four Principles  | Drivers  |  Tools and Processes  | EOTC process
Impact project evaluation	4 principles evaluation rubric
Reference	Impact Project Glossary

During the proposal

Having clearly defined, specific and measurable success criteria helps you to meet your project goals. A significant part of your proposal phase will be spent developing your initial success criteria. You will refine and add to these across the course of your project as your understanding changes and expertise develops. Success criteria help you:

• measure your progress towards quality product at the end of each day
• set clear, useful tasks each day
• identify required resources for each day

This can be a challenging task and you should seek assistance of an expert mentor or other expert. Good success criteria are SMART. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time related.

Example

An instructional video on horse care and riding might have the following success criteria: our video will be at least 5 minutes long. it will cover all the basics of care and preparation for riding. it will use a variety of camera shots to best show what the audience needs to see. it will use short phrases to communicate the most important part of each stage of the video. it will have at least three types of music to fit the mood of each part of the video. it will have an engaging title sequence with fancy animations and credits.

Example

A computer game designed in Scratch might have the following success criteria: our platform adventure game will have 5 levels. each level will cover at least ten screens of graphics. the game will be bug free and will finish when the lives are run out or the play finishes all the levels. each level will have a recognisable theme (eg - thick jungle forest, desert ruins etc) each item and character will have sounds associated with them. each level will have different music that fits the theme. there will also be combat music that takes over during boss fights.

During the project

	Success Criterion:	List tasks linked to this criteria:	Completed, and to what level?	Learning associated with this criterion	Refinements to be made to criterion or tasks
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File:Impact project success criteria evaluation.odt

While Progressing the Project

Success criteria are used during your project progress to set tasks at the beginning of the day and adjust your timeline as you go. You might even improve your success criteria as they change to reflect your progress, impact and product aims. You can use the either the progress booklet and timesheets to assist with task setting at the beginning of each day and always use the task setting flow diagram with the help of a mentor until you have the process memorised. Good task setting consists of:

1. what success criteria are we working toward today?
2. what tasks do we need to get done to get there?
3. who will be responsible for each task?
4. what deliverables do we need to set for each person and each task?

A diagram illustrating possible timesheet implementation.

More useful tools for understanding and using success criteria

• A template of a timesheet to customise for your needs: File:Impact project timesheet template.ods
• A presentation on success criteria is here.