Understanding how project-management performance in the early stage affects project outcomes is critical to project decision-making process. Our study contributes by revealing how different constructs of project performance are interrelated before the construction phase of a project, and how they will impact project outcomes. Drawing on theories of project and organization management, we develop a project performance-causality model. Our research results suggest that the outcomes of completed projects are significantly directly related to the performance of project innovation and quality in the early stage of project delivery process (i.e., before project construction). Succeeding analysis reveals that communication performance before project construction indirectly affects project performance, which has the largest effect on project outcomes. The research findings indicate that it is practical to estimate marginal project outcomes quantitatively prior to project construction.