Project Management: Why Projects Fail
My professional goal is to improve the overall success rate of projects. Proactive Project Management (Pro-PM) results in successful projects by gaining stakeholder buy-in through strategic vision, effective communication, deliberate planning methodology and building effective teams. With over 30 years of experience in the system integrations consulting industry, I have recovered failing projects for a multitude of clients ranging from manufacturing all the way to travel and hospitality. Currently, I am aligned with Blackstone and Cullen (a local consultancy) that has a culture of “do it right, get it done.” My professional background includes working as a program manager for a big five consulting firm and as a major global system integrator.
It is a fact that three-quarters of projects fail because senior management does not get involved.3 This costs the U.S. economy about $50-$150 billion annually.2 Failure may be the greatest teacher, but executing project management in this manner is too costly and inefficient.
There must be stakeholder buy-in
From my experience, the main reason a project fails is due to no stakeholder buy-in. This happens when there was no assessment conducted to define the problem and therefore no actual business case was created. If there is no assessment or business case, there are no defined business benefits to include success criteria tied to requirements. If there are no defined benefits, there is no commitment of support through an itemized budget. If there is no itemized budget, there is no assurance of the best enterprise resources being allocated to each effort. When a team does not have support from leadership, they ultimately cannot excel because they are not set up for success.
The four contributing factors to a lack of stakeholder buy-in:
1. No strategic vision
Too much focus on technical detail without making business value a priority. Leadership needs to understand what the ROIs are for the business and these details should be laid out in a business case, which will better explain the strategic initiative.
2. Ineffective communication
Leaders must establish clear accountability based on measured results. This includes independencies between projects, a benefits realization roadmap and the criteria that will determine the outcome of success.
There should always be a detailed and complete communication plan with a schedule of expected meetings and frequency.
3. No planning methodology
Utilizing consistent processes helps manage ambiguous checkpoints. Leaders must establish benchmarks of productivity and gather quality historical data for analysis such as schedules, costs, quality and other project related factors.
Implement tools and technologies that include RAM, WBS, Gantt charts and other project tracking assets.
4. Ineffective teams
Build a team of trusting members. It is crucial to not only recruit and hire professionals with the right specialized skills, but also to retain that talent.
References
1. 70 percent of projects fail. [source: 4 PM]
2. The failure of IT costs the U.S. economy about $50-$150 billion annually. [source: Harvard BusinessReview]
3. Three-quarters of projects fail because senior management doesn’t get involved. [source: Capterra]
