Projects still fail

Mankind has over 10.000 years of experience with big endeavors or projects. We have a lot of methods, models and tools to manage projects. Why are so many projects currently failing?

Experience

Very early in history people built big structures which required planning and a coordination of a bigger group of people over a longer period of time. From our present-day perspective we are wondering how our ancestors managed to build these impressive buildings with relative few means. Some famous examples are the following:

Since the early 19th century there are different approaches and project management methods. Different science disciplines have worked on these methods. The result is a bunch of methods that should apply for nearly every project. It is interesting how old some methods are, which we are currently still discussing and trying to implement.

These two diagrams show, that we not only have the experience but also have methods to handle big projects. This again leads to the question: Why are so many projects still failing?

Project success and failure

Checking the internet, you can find several studies about the reasons for project success or failure. I chose five studies about success factors and six about the roots for failure. The recurrent factors which appear in the studies can be condensed into these 18 categories:

• Goals
• Politics
• Communication
• Project Manager
• Estimation
• Budget
• Planning
• Team
• Culture
• Method
• Top Management Support
• Risk Management
• Requirements Management
• Change Management
• Stakeholder Management
• Controlling
• Dependencies
• Other

In order to understand the relevance of these categories over all studies I followed these steps for each study:

1. The factors were numbered according to their importance from the lowest 1 to the highest (equal to the count of factors in the study).
2. The factors falling in one category were grouped.
3. The numbers from step 1 were added for all factors inside each category.
4. The categories were ordered according to the results of the previous step.
5. Each category got a number according to the order from 0 (no relevance) to 1 (highest relevance).

The category numbers in studies were summed up and used as a basis for the following diagram.

There are five factors which are most often seen as crucial for project success and failure.

Goals

It is surprising that the goals are so often seen as a critical factor for a project. Intuitively everybody would assume that a clear goal is a natural premise for an expensive project. In reality and according to experience there is a difference between more or less abstract high-level goals and clear measurable objectives. Often only the high-level goal or only an aim is defined but not the path to get there. Sometimes too high expectations in new products or technologies are involved. One example for high expectations in a technology are microservices. The pros and cons of this architectural approach are described in another article series.

Project Manager and Communication

The role of the project manager is clearly the most important one within a project. His knowledge, experience and especially his leadership skills are an important success factor. He has a huge influence on the motivation of the teams. The second very important factor for this motivation is the communication within the project. With a good and frequent communication you can clarify the objectives of the project and why they are important.

Team

Apparently it is often very difficult to recruit the right people and keep them together. That said it is important to make a project on the one hand as attractive as possible for qualified people and on the other hand to create an environment in which people can work in a most productive way. Fortunately, these two preconditions do not contradict each other. Together with the motivation mentioned in the chapter above they are the focus of the so-called agile methods. Moreover this approach corresponds to human nature, a subject which will be detailed within the next article.

Planning

Frequently the overall scheduling is either not detailed or not realistic enough - or both. Sometimes the planning is more influenced by business plans and strategic goals than by unbiased estimation and expert knowledge. More often than not I witnessed how each team member felt confident, that the schedule made by project- or top management would never become reality.

Conclusion

Despite the wide range of experience and the variety of methods project still fail. It seems that we know what should be done but don't do it. There definitive is a human factor we have to consider in projects and project methods. This is part of the next article.

Copyright 2021, last updated 11.01.2021

Next post: Mind human nature

References

Success

Prof. Dr. Ayelt Komus, Erfolgsfaktoren im Projektmanagement - Studienergebnisse und praktische Empfehlungen, 20.01.2016, https://www.process-and-project.net/studien/studien-download-prozess-teil-2/studienbericht-erfolgsfaktoren-im-projektmanagement-newsletter-download/, found 14.09.2020

GPM & PA Consulting Group, Ergebnisse der Projektmanagement Studie 2008 - Erfolg und Scheitern im Projektmanagement, 12.2008, https://www.gpm-ipma.de/fileadmin/user_upload/GPM/Know-How/Ergebnisse_Erfolg_und_Scheitern-Studie_2008.pdf, found 14.09.2020

Erin Palmer, Five Factors That Lead to Successful Projects, 05.10.2018, https://project-management.com/five-factors-that-lead-to-successful-projects/, found 15.09.2020

Sylvie Nina Thiam Size, Key Factors of Project Success, 2014, https://pmi.org.sg/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=279:key-factors-of-project-success&catid=119:current-pmquest&Itemid=194, found 15.09.2020

Seweryn Spalek, Critical success factors in project management. To fail or not to fail, that is the question!, 2005, https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/critical-success-factors-project-management-7568, found 10.12.2020

Failure

Rosanne Lim, Top 10 Main Causes of Project Failure, 04.07.2019, https://project-management.com/top-10-main-causes-of-project-failure/, found 15.09.2020

kissflow, 6 Reasons for Project Failure and How to Avoid It, 21.11.2020, href="https://kissflow.com/project/why-projects-fail/, found 10.12.2020

PMI, 9th Global Project Management Survey - Success Rates Rise - Transforming the high cost of low performance, 2017, https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/learning/thought-leadership/pulse/pulse-of-the-profession-2017.pdf?sc_lang_temp=en, found 10.12.2020

Michelle Symonds, 15 CAUSES OF PROJECT FAILURE, 13.06.2011, https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/15-causes-of-project-failure.php, found 10.12.2020

Sarah Morris, 5 Reasons Why Projects Fail And How To Stop Ist, 14.08.2020, http://www.cofmag.com/2020/08/5-reasons-why-projects-fail-and-how-to-stop-it/, found 10.12.2020

Expert Panel - Forbes Technology Council, 14 Common Reasons Software Projects Fail (And How To Avoid Them), 31.05.2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/03/31/14-common-reasons-software-projects-fail-and-how-to-avoid-them/?sh=7dc8c337798c#4b3b07fa798c, found 10.12.2020