Designing and Implementing

Balanced Scorecards for the Architectural Firm

Cliff S. Moser, AIA, MSQA, LEED

E-mail address: cliff.moser@gmail.com

SUMMARY

This paper outlines how an architectural firm can implement a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) to improve the quality of its

service and deliverables, attract and retain talented and productive staff, satisfy and retain clients, manage consultants, and

achieve greater financial and market success.

WHAT IS A BALANCED SCORECARD?

The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) began as a Harvard Business School research project on performance measurement by

Robert Eccles, who published The Performance Measurement Manifesto in 1991. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

adding to this body of knowledge published their seminal paper The Balanced Scorecard – Measures that Drive Performance

in 1992 as a challenge to existing financial-based business measurement systems. Traditional performance metrics including

fees, sales and profits are lagging indicators which couldn’t measure the intangible assets of design portfolio, customers,

brand, or staff talent.

The BSC recognized these limitations and developed a model for performance based on measures through four separate

but linked business perspectives which achieve performance balance:

Employee Learning and Growth (People)

Internal Processes (Processes)

Customers

Financial

People identify and manage the intangible assets of people, including management, architects, drafters, and

administration staff. With this perspective the firm can develop metrics for measuring people performance, such as employee

attraction and retention, employee training and professional development. This perspective links to the firm’s internal

processes.

Processes -are activities the firm completes in order to exist, including design, document production, and marketing. The

measure of internal processes is a leading indicator of improvements in customer and financial perspectives.

Customers -defines the firm’s value goals for its customers. Using measures of internal customer success such as

complete inter-team document packages, as well as external customer measures such as satisfaction, retention, and referrals,

will help performance in this perspective.

Financial -is made up of the traditional lagging indicators of sales, fees and booked work, as well as new leading

indicators of market directions and growth help balance out the measurements of the organization’s success.

With these perspectives, the BSC recognizes the workings of the firm as a system and leverages Dr. Deming’s theory of

Profound Knowledge (System, Variation, Knowledge and Psychology)(Deming, 1992). This identification helps create and

align organizational processes and performance.

WHAT IS AN ARCHITECTURE FIRM?

An architecture firm is a professional service, project based organization which provides design service for individual

clients. Its products and services are unique and one of a kind. According to Tennant Insurance Risk Services for Architects

and Engineers (Tennant, 2004), there are approximately 130,000 licensed architects in the U.S, of which 86 percent practice

in or own one of the 15,000 firms. These firms bill their clients an estimated $26 billion annually. Of that work, 58 percent is

new construction, with the remaining 42 percent rehabilitation or renovation projects. Other Tennant reported statistics

include:

-Sole practitioners make up about one third of all firms, and are responsible for 4 percent of the billings. Small firms

with two to four employees comprise another third and bill 6 percent. Firms with five to nine employees account for 13

percent of the billings, firms with 10-19 employees account for 16 percent, 20-49 employees account for 23 percent, and

firms with 50-plus employees account for 38 percent of all industry billings.

-California leads the nation in number of firms (3,100) and annual dollar volume of billings ($2.9 billion) double that of

second-place New York in both categories.

-Nearly three quarters of all firms have annual billings of less than $500,000, and collectively their billings account for

20 percent of the industry. In comparison, less than 2 percent of the firms-those with annual billings of $10 million or more-

account for 25 percent of the billings nationally.

-More than 40 percent of architecture firms have been in business at least 20 years, 35 percent were established in the

1980s, and nearly 10 percent were established since 1990. In terms of billings by client type, local, state, and federal

governments collectively are responsible for the largest share of architects’ billings-nearly 30 percent. Businesses generate a

quarter of architects’ work, with private institutions generating the same amount.

-Distribution of billings by building type shows 40 percent from institutional buildings, 30 percent from commercial

buildings, and 15 percent from residential work. Education facilities make up the single largest market sector, followed by

office buildings and health-care facilities.

WHY SHOULD AN ARCHITECTURAL FIRM USE A BALANCED SCORECARD?

Highlighted in Kaplan and Norton’s research was an inability of traditional measures to identify intangible assets.

Financial metrics describe only a small part of firm performance. A BSC helps determine what is important for existence and

sustainability by addressing multiple layers of the firm through its perspectives of People, Processes, Customers, as well as

Finance. Traditional performance measurement systems are prescriptive and specify the particular actions they want

employees to take and then measure to see if employees have taken those actions. Traditional systems try to control behavior.

The BSC provides direction for the kind of organization many companies are trying to become. The BSC puts strategy and

vision, not control, at the center of the system. It establishes goals but assumes that people will adopt whatever behaviors and

take whatever actions necessary to achieve those goals. The measures are designed to pull people toward the overall mission

and vision. Management may know what the end result should be, but they cannot tell employees exactly how to achieve that

result, if only because the conditions in which employees operate are constantly changing (Kaplan & Norton, 1992).

Changing conditions to the profession include rising professional liability, standard of care and negligence claims. Siegel

outlines people and process metrics of design team “capability issues” (where someone on the project team commits or

exacerbates an error) result in approximately 26 percent of claim losses (Siegel, 2000). Included in this category are problems

resulting from unqualified or insufficient staff. Process and customer metrics of communication issues were determined to be

a factor in 22 percent in claim losses. These include inadequate documentation and client communications; a lack of

procedures to identify and address conflicts; staff unsure about their responsibilities; poor documentation regarding changes

in scope, schedule and budget; lack of or inadequate progress reports; and poor client education regarding project

requirements. A process metric of better attention to quality control would have enabled prevention of another 15 percent of

the losses. Additionally 80 percent of claims filed against design firms have nothing to do with professional negligence and

nothing to do with their technical skill of their staff. These claims are the result of other factors such as client service, and

failure to meet owners’ expectations as well as financial issues (Siegel, 2000).

This paper will present three types of Balanced Scorecards for the architectural firm:

1. Project-based,

2. Initiative-based

3. Organizational-based.

PROJECT BASED BALANCED SCORECARD

As a project-based organization (PBO), the easiest type of BSC to implement is a Project-Based BSC. Firms can modify

and align the traditional project measures of deliverables, budgets, and schedules with the perspectives of a project-based

BSC.

MISSION AND VISION STATEMENTS

Mission (or Direction) Statement

To establish a foundation for the BSC, the team should establish project mission and vision statements. The mission

should identify the project’s Core Purpose and Direction, which sets it apart from other firms. The mission should be

something the firm’s stakeholders should easily recognize and can be proud of. Mission and vision statements are sometimes

considered to be organizational-level, not project-level activities (C. Nelson, personal communication, March 12, 2005)

however firms typically differentiate goals from project to project. In some cases a project goal may be to win a design

award, another project may be outlined as relationship building, while another for cash flow. The terms and activities are not

as important as the team recognition of strategy and direction for the project. Giving it a name ensures that the activity and

acknowledgment occurs, and that metrics and goals can be created to measure the mission’s success.

Vision Statement

The Vision should embody the project’s “I have a Dream” goals. The Dream delineates the project’s long term and most

challenging goals. There may be only a 50/50 chance of realizing the Dream, but the stakeholders should believe that they

can. The Dream’s goals should be demanding enough so the stakeholders feel inspired and challenged.

Vision statements include:

Target – quantitative/qualitative goals.

Common Enemy - overtaking another organization or project.

Role Model - to become like another firm/project in a different industry or market.

Internal Transformation – identification of goals to realize stakeholder transformation. This is important for difficult or

multi-faceted projects.

The successful identification of mission/vision will help identify and align the goals of the project. Once the team has

outlined its mission and vision, it should identify the strategy of the project, creating metrics which align:

People - To achieve mission/vision goals, how should the team learn and improve?

Processes - To satisfy customers, which processes need to excel?

Customers - To achieve mission/vision how should we look to our customers? All customers, both internal

(consultants and departmental teams) and external (clients, agencies, and contractors).

Financial – If we succeed, how will we look to our stakeholders?

The team identifies the project metrics, goals, and reporting period. Each perspective should have several measures. The

measures should be “SMART” (Carnegie, 1996):

Specific (S) - Identifiable with a relevant variable and represented accurately

Measurable (M) - Measurable, with mechanisms necessary to generate the corresponding quantifiable information

Action-oriented (A) - In relation to critical processes of the organization

Relevant (R) - Differentiates between trivial many, vital few

Timely (T) - Lagging / leading indicator, for timely decision-making

Table 1 below categorizes the project Perspectives, Objectives, Lag and Lead Measures, and Target for each Project

Goal. This one is delineates the Processes Perspective.

Project Goal Perspective Objective Lag Measure Lead Measure Target

Build an

outstanding

Project

Processes On-time

construction

delivery

1 RFI Turnaround

2 Submittal

Turnaround

3 Error Free

Drawings

4 Timely Field

Decisions

5. Inspection

Approval

1. Anticipated

Drawings

2. Scheduled

Work.

3. Team

Innovation

4. Team Problem

Solving

90% weighted

Table 1.

In a CA-phase project-based BSC, stakeholders include the design team, contractor, reviewing agencies, and owner. The

BSC is to help the team meet its goals and stay focused on improvement and new value for the project.

People-use employee training and education, retention, and advancement as lagging indicators. Leading indicators are

staff training signups and employee cycling.

Processes-use collected lagging indicators measures of RFI and Submittal Turnaround. Then add Error Free Drawings,

Timely Field Decisions, and Inspection Approval. Leading measures include Anticipated Drawings (from the lagging

indicators of Field Decisions), Scheduled To-Be Constructed, and new metrics like Team Problem Solving. Metrics like

Team Innovation help the team augment traditional biased lagging measures and propose leading indicators such as

innovative ideas or processes.

Customers- include internal customers of suppliers/consultants, and external customers of client, contractor and agency.

The team creates objectives and goals that measure deliverable accuracy and schedule.

Finance- lagging measures include contractor pay application turnaround, change order approval, and labor hour budget

compliance. Change order requests, and proposals are leading measures.

Ranking and weighing the measures.

An example of process measures for the CA portion

of a project (Table 2). Five balanced lagging measures

are used: Submittal Turnaround, RFI Turnaround, Error-

Free Drawings, Timely Field Decisions, and Inspection

Approvals. The identified measures need to be weighted

after collection. This is the critical link back to the

project’s mission/vision and strategy. Without goals and

weighed measures, success will only be anecdotal.

Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)

The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to

create a table of paired measures (Terninko, 1997).

The measures are paired against each other. 1s are

placed in each similar paired set (submittal turnaround to

submittal turnaround for example). Next, submittal

turnaround is compared to RFI turnaround. The team

determines that there is no difference in weight, so a 1 is

placed in the box. Error Free Drawings is considered more important than Submittal Turnaround, so a 1 and a slash (1/ ) are

placed in this box. (The /5 is added once the Error Free Drawings row is measured against Submittal Turnaround the row

below). Continuing the paired weighting, the team determines that Error Free Drawings, Timely Field Decisions, and

Inspection Approval are more important than Submittal Review and RFI Turnaround (by 5, 8, and 9 times. The team totals

each of the columns. (Table 3)

Sub

mitta

l T

urn

aro

und

RF

I T

urn

aro

und

Err

or

Fre

e D

raw

ings

Tim

ely

Fie

ld D

ecis

ions

Inspection A

ppro

va

l

Submittal Turnaround 1 1 1/5 1/9 1/9

RFI Turnaround 1 1 1/4 1/8 1/9

Error Free Drawings 5 4 1 2 1

Timely Field Decisions 9 8 2 1 2

Inspection Approval 9 9 2 1 1

Table 2

The team divides each box number by the column total, which normalizes the table so each column adds to 1 (Table 4).

The table shows that Timely Field Decisions (0.36) is the most important metric, 3 times more important that Submittal

(0.03) and RFI Turnaround (0.04) and half again as important as Error Free Drawings (0.25). Inspection Approval shows

(0.32).

The analysis and presentation of these metrics

enables the team to understand what constitutes success

and improvement. The team lists the following goals for

the metrics listed above for reporting:

Submittal Turnaround - a goal of 90% is set

for all submittals to be turned around within their

contracted time requirement.

RFI Turnaround –a goal of 90% turn-around is

established.

Error Free Drawings - Error Free Drawings is

the most important metric. Every week there is a team

site walk with resultant questions. Timely designer

response is required to keep the project on schedule.

The team sets a 90% goal.

Inspections Approval - This project has third

party oversight. Inspection approvals are required to

keep the project on schedule. The team initiates a 90%

rating for inspection approvals.

MONTHLY TALLY

Submittal Turnaround –The goal was

90%. The actual submittal turnaround time

was 87%. Congratulations!

RFI Turnaround –Again the goal was a

high 90%. The actual turnaround was 85%.

Error Free Drawings –During the time

period only a single bulletin was issued.

There were no significant coordination

issues. The team exceeded their goal of

90% by 8%.

Timely Field Decisions –The team fell

short for this metric, earning only 65%

because a number of field decisions were

carried over into subsequent weeks.

Inspection Approval –This is also a

disappointment, with the team meeting

only 70% of its goals.

Each reporting score is calculated by

multiplying the goal to the normalized weighted number, and then summing the results. The monthly score is as follows:

Submittals - 3% below goal of 90%. Therefore the team multiplies 0.97*0.03 = 0.0291

RFIs - were 5% below the goal of 90%. The team multiplies 0.95*0.04 = 0.038

Error Free Drawings - were above the goal by 8%. The team multiplies 1.08*0.25 = 0.27

Timely Field Decisions -. 65% creates a 25% gap. The team multiplies 0.75*0.36 = 0.27

Inspection -. This was a bad month, 20% shy of its goal of 90%. 0.8*0.32 = .256.

Sub

mitta

l T

urn

aro

und

RF

I T

urn

aro

und

Err

or

Fre

e D

raw

ings

Tim

ely

Fie

ld D

ecis

ions

Inspection A

ppro

va

l

Submittal Turnaround 1.00 1.00 0.20 0.11 0.11

RFI Turnaround 1.00 1.00 0.25 0.13 0.11

Error Free Drawings 5.00 4.00 1.00 2.00 1.00

Timely Field Decisions 9.00 8.00 2.00 1.00 2.00

Inspection Approval 9.00 9.00 2.00 1.00 1.00

Total 25.00 23.00 5.45 4.24 4.22 Table 3

Sub

mitta

l

Turn

aro

und

RF

I T

urn

aro

und

Err

or

Fre

e D

raw

ings

Tim

ely

Fie

ld

Decis

ions

Inspection A

ppro

va

l

Norm

aliz

ed

Tota

l

Submittal Turnaround 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.03 0.17 0.03

RFI Turnaround 0.04 0.04 0.05 0.03 0.03 0.18 0.04

Error Free Drawings 0.20 0.17 0.18 0.47 0.24 1.27 0.25

Timely Field Decisions 0.36 0.35 0.37 0.24 0.47 1.78 0.36

Inspection Approval 0.36 0.39 0.37 0.24 0.24 1.59 0.32

Total 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 5.00 1.00 Table 4

Reporting achievements: 0.029 + 0.038 + 0.27 + 0.27 + 0.27 + 0.256 = 0.836 or 84% to a goal of 90%. The AHP showed

that a 100% win in Inspection, Field Walks, and Error Free Drawings deliver results immediately. A BSC keeps the team

from creating arbitrary or impulsive metrics, and allows it to focus and improve on activities which matter.

THE INITIATIVE BASED BALANCED SCORECARD

Once several Project-based BSC’s have been completed, the firm has mechanisms in place for capturing, weighing and

successfully reporting and improving results. It can now implement an initiative-based BSC. Firms create initiatives as part

of growth and development plans. However, initiatives are created with only loose connections to other processes in the firm.

A BSC helps solve that problem, by aligning measures through the four perspectives.

One of the tools an Initiative-Based BSC should enable is to help the architectural firm correct what can be described as

organizational learning disabilities. These occur when an organization fails to learn from experience and fails to disseminate

the organizational lessons-learned. Learning disabilities also happen when project or process knowledge is lost through the

erosion of institutional memory. This happens because of a failure to capture, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.

The architectural firm’s organizational knowledge is explicit or implicit. To understand the difference between these

types of knowledge is to appreciate how architects are trained and how they learn. Design related issues and problem solving

cannot typically be solved by explicitly outlined protocols. While the profession can utilize explicit knowledge including

standards, codebooks and established problem-solving skills, the designer typically still relies on an apprentice-based

pedagogy. The apprentice designer learns by watching and by doing, with knowledge and experience developed by trial and

error. This type of learning and knowledge is implicit. The senior designers filter this learning and training, continuing the

discovery and presentation learned in school. Since this learning and knowledge cannot be written down as rules, protocols

and procedures, and cannot easily be transferred, it exists fleetingly as controlled implicit knowledge.

Therefore when the firm is ready to roll-out an initiative it should carefully delineate the measures required in the four

perspectives to align, measure, and support the initiative. For example, if the firm were to leverage a Lean Design production

initiative (based on the theories of the Toyota Production Systems (TPS)) it should first create mission/vision statements, then

create the perspective metrics and reporting structure to indicate that the organization is aligned behind the initiative.

For instance:

Mission – to leverage the core capabilities of the firm to create processes that support the goals of the TPS, applied to a

professional service organization and Lean Design Concepts for creating customer value and profit.

Vision – to achieve Toyota-type market success in the design field.

Perspective Goals/Metrics:

People – to provide staff with training and resources to achieve Mission and Vision/Management and Staff training,

reward categories identified measured for achieving goals. Identify leading/lagging metrics.

Processes – identify internal processes from marketing, design, to document production and construction administration

which can be value-mapped and streamlined to support lean goals. Each department within the organization including

accounting, front desk and back of house administration, specifications, contract writing, and business development should

participate and offer metrics for support of the goals/improvement metrics of value mapped step reductions –proposal

turnaround, cad printing steps, reducing long-distance telephone call access codes. The organization’s internal processes

drive customer satisfaction and should be screened for lean resizing.

Customers – let external customers know of the firm’s initiative offer incentives to become a part of the training, create

similar goals for the internal customers of design, production, and administration teams. Remember the People perspective

goals/metrics and reward customers similarly. The leading metrics of customers aware of program, lagging measures of

customers signed up with a lean project.

Financial – all perspective lead to financial success. Customers are to be won, processes to be changed, and people

trained and rewarded based on the success of the financial perspectives. Capture and report the leading metrics of lean

financed projects in the pipeline to lagging measures of successfully completed projects and marketing.

The purpose of the Initiative-based BSC is to support the mission/vision and strategic goals of the initiative to enable its

success. The initiative team and organization should align and support its success. Metrics should be determined, weighed

and ranked similar to the AHP method outlined under the project-based BSC.

One example of a successful Initiative-based BSC was the firm of Perkins & Will who informally utilized an initiative-

based BSC to leverage itself as a LEED© (Leadership in Energy Efficient Design) accredited organization. In doing so it

aligned its BSC perspectives to match that particular mission, vision, and goals and strategies. For People, management

required all associate level staff be accredited by year’s end. Process requires that every project go through a LEED© sizing

(go/no-go) exercise. Customers incorporated a process surveying clients on accreditation. Financial tied the initiative together

with staff bonuses and a training budget. Financial also included additional marketing funds to promulgate the initiative to

clients, and outlined additional service fees/discounts available for the required paperwork.

Leading and lagging indicators included:

People –number of staff training, number of staff accredited.

Processes –number of projects in process of accreditation, number of projects accredited.

Customers –clients participating, interested, happy/disappointed with outcome, and client value.

Financial –number of bonuses available, number of bonuses received. Additional services received from accreditation.

The initiative-based BSC team builds an AHP diagram to determine what measures for this initiative are most important,

and each perspective’s targets for measured success. Once established, the initiative could me integrated into the firm as one

of its many processes.

ORGANIZATIONAL-BASED BALANCED SCORECARD

The Organizational-Based BSC completes the process of organizational transformation which began with the Project

Based BSC and was integrated into the Initiative-BSC. This BSC should leverage the ability for complete leadership and

firm-wide transformation.

This BSC should begin the process similarly, by building meaningful mission and vision statements. As discussed above,

mission and vision are very important in establishing the firm’s identity, its operation philosophy, its core values and critical

success factors. Measures for People, Processes, Customers, and Financial follow. Then the firm creates measures and

indicators with challenging goals/objectives that are not subject to malicious compliance or manipulation. They should also

be timely, dimensioned and limited, and desired, negotiated and endorsed. Trivial goals can be worse than unreachable ones.

This BSC should help delineate the firm’s Core Capabilities as well as locate its Core Rigidities. Core capabilities are

what the firm does best. Core Rigidities are hardened Core Capabilities created out discontinuities of the firm’s perspectives,

in which organizational strengths which have become path dependencies. Core Rigidities are most dangerous when a

company or industry is poised on the brink of a Disruptive Technological –when the technology, market or service on which

the firm/industry is based on is shifting (Leonard, 1998).

A major function of the Organizational-Based BSC is to enable organization transformation. Not a small task, which is

why the firm should be able to rely on past project and initiative-based success templates. Most management texts, when

referring to a BSC reference its role in strategic planning. Bruce D. Cox, writing in an American Institute of Architect’s paper

titled Elements of Strategic Planning, references the BSC as a tool to assist and manage strategic thinking and planning (Cox

2004). Therefore, the goals of an Organizational-Based BSC should be big and audacious.

In recognition of that purpose, the BSC team should be prepared to restructure the core of the firm. The second

perspective; Process, is where the firm’s greatest challenges and improvement opportunities reside. Firms hate the idea of

identifying the work they perform as “a process,” as it sounds too mechanical; too predictable to be an adequate descriptor of

the elegant and miraculous activity of creating design (C. Nelson, 2005). However, the transformation of knowledge and art

into the buildable documents of design is the service of firm. Therefore the quality of the outputs is entirely dependent on the

quality with which the process is executed. Process excellence minimizes waste of time and resources. Researchers Mejabi &

Black show that only 25% of process time in typical organizations involves value-added work, and recommend that the BSC

team focus on the following components of the process system in order to identify waste and prepare for improvement

(1997):

-The process infrastructure –these describe the computers, workspaces, references, all of the tools of the process. Before

changing the infrastructure, the team should balance the value requirements of the other perspectives into the infrastructure.

For example, do new tools require additional training? Will both the external and internal customers realize value from the

introduction of new infrastructure?

-The process culture –these are the components of the firm’s delivery and communication processes. Is the process

hierarchical or loose? Are the boundaries rigid and waiting, or collaborative and fast? Determining the existing culture and

power centers will shape any proposed modifications.

-The process knowledge –these are the predictive principles and intrinsic/extrinsic knowledge base that shapes and

directs the activities of the process. Process failures are embodied in process knowledge. Process knowledge is driven by

training; however most firms refuse to fund training, believing that a firm trains its employees just to see them leave (C.

Nelson, 2005). However, a BSC should help identify how to retain and attract qualified and skilled staff.

-The process human resources –what inherent skills or deficiencies exist with the process team? Is there lots of potential

which is not being tapped, or are the teams struggling for lack of skill, training or leadership? In architecture there are

teammates who will refuse to work in a process-based structure. They will boycott and destroy at worst, maliciously comply

at best, as they have their own ideas about how creative endeavors, let alone, processes work. Spending time and resources

trying to “re-train” these specific resources without their endorsement can undo the best efforts of process realignment.

-The process methods and approaches –this aspect captures the requirements of the list above. How do the process teams

function? What are the rules, the guidelines, and the techniques to use and apply for the best results?

Using these categories the BSC team can determine whether the mission/vision goals can be achieved by facilitating

complete cultural change, or by just providing better tools (Mejabi & Black, 1997). The linked BSC perspective goals

facilitate a systems approach so that a single throwaway idea, like laying-off a number of employees to attain a short-term

goal, cannot gain greater credence into the process.

SUMMARY

By utilizing the three types of BSCs the firm can achieve new and sustaining balanced performance success.

The Project-Based BSC enables a firm to utilize existing project metrics as aligned performance goals. The BSC also

identifies methods for identifying collection metrics, and then determine weighing opportunities based on each project’s

mission and vision goals.

The Initiative-Based BSC builds on the success of the project BSC by creating balanced measures around a firm’s many

initiatives. It also enables opportunities for capture and dissemination of firm knowledge and culture.

The Organizational-Based BSC helps the firm realize the transformational abilities of a BSC and create and align

organizational goals and strategies. The firm which utilizes a BSC can adjust more quickly to new opportunities and threats,

and has a better understanding of its tangible and intangible assets. The organizational-based BSC should be built around the

firm’s core capabilities as well as help identify and limit the firm’s core rigidities. This BSC can also be used to identify and

manage potential disruptive technologies facing the firm. One particular focus of this BSC could be to focus on Process

issues, the co-production of services and deliverables with the firm’s customers, which drive the value of the firm.

In conclusion, a firm can decide to use a BSC just to help manage its projects, to measure and align the success of its

initiatives, or to ultimately manage and transform the organization.

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