Measuring Project Performance Inspired by Stock Index

A fundamental precept of management is that projects must be measured to be controllable. But existing approaches to capture project performance suffer from various problems - being proprietary, measuring time performance in dollar terms, reaching zero (work left) or one (work done) upon completion, and erasing any notion of progression. Therefore the concept for a unified, generalizable, and scalable performance metric is presented. It can function at levels from individual activities to entire industry sectors. Its inspiration is gleaned from modern portfolio theory, which has long been tracking and successfully comparing highly different companies. An analogy-based methodology will adapt and adopt the financial index beta and related concepts and test their functioning on a hypothetical schedule with known progress deviations. Such indicator has the potential to become a vital tool to measure and identify production efficiency, competitiveness, and ultimately the propensity to complete work on time.