Managers track project performance using a variety of tools. One of the standard metrics applied is the Actual Costs versus Budget over time. The project reflected in the example plot may be considered successful by many project managers because the cost performance is better than budgeted. There are many reasons for these results in addition to the chance that the project manager is “a very cost-driven” individual.
However, other plausible reasons include: 1) work actually completed is less than planned, 2) the original project estimate was based on incomplete data, 3) the original budget remained unchanged after project authorization, and, 4) the initial project conditions do not represent the current conditions.