What is Project Sustainability?

Project sustainability means that we can maintain our project's work and outcomes at a certain rate or level. Sustainability is bigger than a single project or project manager and needs to be defined and understood at the organizational level. As a project manager, we want to understand what sustainability means for our organization so that we can effectively consider it. Sustainability might be defined as:

• Environmental Sustainability - How will our outcomes impact our climate and environment? How can we ensure our project and outcomes support best practices and organizational values for reducing climate damage and impacts?

• Organizational Sustainability - How do our project's outcomes help sustain our organization? Are we doing work or building outcomes that further our organization's mission?

• Financial Sustainability - Are our project outcomes something we can afford to maintain? Do we have the funding or backing to continue to support the outcomes or programs we are building?

• Operational Sustainability - Do we have the people and time to implement and maintain our outcomes? Can we actually run this new program or initiative that our project is creating?

Project sustainability is particularly important for mission-driven organizations because so many projects in these environments are building or creating programs or systems or deliverables that will become a part of the organization's regular or ongoing operations. It’s critical that we make sure that what we are building is something that the organization can maintain or sustain!

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