Articles on project management failures

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Articles on project management failures

Content:

• Article Collection
• IT's biggest project failures -- and what we can learn from them
• 5 common reasons for project failure within agencies and how to avoid them
• The 10 causes of project management failure
• Project Management: Failures Reasons, Myths & The Methodologies
• Ten Strong Reasons Why Projects Fail (And How To Kick Them Out)
• Three Disastrous Project Management Failures

Article Collection

The Project Management Institute PMI holds that all organizations perform two kinds of work: operational work and projects. Due to the repetitive nature of operational work, it is easier to systematize processes. However, because projects have finite start and end dates, are unique in nature, and involve mixed-team players, they are more difficult to systematize and to develop sound methodologies and processes for. Most organizations have run projects that did not end on time, were over budget, or changed scope.

There are many pitfalls that can sink a project. We focus on four basic reasons why projects fail. Because most project teams are comprised of at least three sets of players executive management, project managers, and team members or resources we will take examine each issue from all three vantage points, and provide suggested solutions.

Many projects fail when one or more participating groups does not have access to the right level of information at the right time. Executives often complain that they do not have visibility into all current enterprise projects. They often do not have access to the project schedules in real-time. Sometimes project managers present the plan at the outset of the project, then become gatekeepers of the schedule, explaining to executives that the schedule has not been updated recently and is not ready to be shared.

The sponsors and company executives do not have access to a schedule or to reports until it is too late to either re-direct the effort or cancel the project. Project managers often put together a plan and associated schedule at the outset of a project. The project managers are often so preoccupied with managing issues and re-organizing resources that they do not have time to update the tasks on the schedule and review their impacts.

In fast-paced environments, project managers are asked to work on several projects at one time. Many project managers attempt to keep pace with the task updates on their project schedules.

Those that do end up acting as glorified administrators, spending considerable time asking resources about task progress. Project managers often lack visibility into all the projects their resources are working on. Many times they share team members with other project managers, so they may not know exactly what tasks the resource is working on that day. The most frequently heard complaint from team members is that they lack visibility on a day—to-day basis about the scheduled tasks. If they are working on multiple projects, they may be confused about task priority.

The best solution combines tools, processes, and people-based changes. The tool portion of this solution provides the team with a centralized location for publishing all project schedules.

The simplest way to share project schedules is to post project files in a network folder, setting access rights using Windows folder and group permissions.

A better solution is to push project information to SharePoint or to another intranet or extranet solution with the proper access rights.

The best tool for the job provides a complete enterprise project management solution where all projects are centralized in one database. If the team uses a Web-based system, project information may be accessed remotely if team members travel, work outside the office, or need to update information from client offices. The solution must empower team members to update their own tasks in the centralized system. Obviously there are some serious limitations if the team is simply posting information on the network; versioning is a leading issue.

However, if an enterprise, Web-based project management solution is used, team members may update their own tasks and the information will be available in real time. This relieves the project manager from getting task updates from team members. It also pushes the work to the appropriate level—that is, to the person actually performing the work. In addition, the executive management team has real-time visibility into all projects, including percent complete, hours spent, and the projected costs.

Executives must communicate to all team members the importance of updating tasks and projects daily. Leadership cannot be minimized. In Project Insight implementations, we have found that the most successful teams are those whose leadership has reinforced the request for team member and project manager updates by incorporating the behavior change in performance evaluations, MBOs, and other measurement drivers.

If the executive leadership is lacking, any attempt to change behavior through process changes and software solutions will ultimately fail. Most organizations have more project initiatives than they can ever hope to complete. Many companies begin more initiatives than they probably should, resulting in over-worked and often-unhappy team members. Executives play a key role. If top management is not clear on project priorities, the entire organization will be unclear about which projects are the most important.

Many organizations get so busy that they forget a key component of success is taking the time to meet and discuss strategies to reach these goals. Many times, project managers are given so many projects that they cannot realistically complete them on time and within budget.

More experienced project managers may push back, telling management that all efforts cannot be achieved. Once these goals are clearly defined, then project initiatives may be weighed against these goals. If a project initiative does not fit the long- or short-term goals of an organization, it should not be initiated, and remaining projects may be ranked by priority. Some of the largest and most sophisticated corporations have risk assessment departments whose sole role is to evaluate all the possible opportunities of the organization and determine which initiatives have the greatest revenue potential.

Mid-market players do not have these separate risk organizations. Therefore, it is even more important that executives step up to evaluate and rank project priorities and clearly communicate these priorities to project managers and team members.

Project managers should be consulted when weighing initiatives, as they have insight into the risks involved with different projects. This is particularly important for mid-market companies that do not have separate risk assessment managers. At a minimum, the project priorities must be communicated in status meetings and reiterated frequently. If a project management solution is utilized, the project priority should also be reiterated to all team members.

The lack of project prioritization often leads to overloaded resources. That is, because executive management lacks visibility into all active projects and tasks, they often believe the organization can achieve more than its resources can actually support. Executive managers often delegate the assignment or allocation of resources to resource managers and project managers. If project priorities are not clearly established, it is highly likely that the organization will embark upon too many projects at one time.

The result: team members will be overscheduled. Project managers often claim that executive management has no idea how much work their resources actually have assigned to them. Unless the project managers are willing to stand up to executive management, or have a way to show that their resources are overloaded, they are in trouble.

Such lack of visibility has the great impact on team members—he or she is asked to work extended hours to attempt to fulfill the many projects, tasks, and objectives. However, the result is an over-worked, burned-out employee that may ultimately look for work elsewhere. The Project Management Institute PMI holds that if an employee works an eight hour work day, the resource should not be assigned more than six hours of work.

This allows the employee two hours for the administrative aspects of his or her position. The first part of the solution has to be an education of executive management about this concept and a commitment to build a corporate culture of planning and managing resources effectively.

There are many ways to uncover what resources are working on at any time. The simplest tool is to use a white board with a daily grid displaying the task being performed and the team member working on that task. For some fast-paced environments, this solution may work well. Of course, there has to be a point person to manage the white board.

Many project teams use Excel spreadsheets to outline the tasks and the team members assigned to them. Again, usually there is one point person, as Excel is not a collaborative solution and needs an owner. This can be cumbersome for organizations with multiple projects. More sophisticated teams benefit from using a centralized resource management and allocation software solution.

These solutions allow projects, tasks, and resources to be input while in the planning stage. Then the workload of each resource may be viewed in a graphical report, letting resource managers, project managers, and executives see the total workload. Once the total workload is assessed, choices can be made e. Once a project is in full swing, a common issue is communication. Most project teams use e-mail to communicate the status of their projects and tasks.

If a new resource joins the project, there is no centralized view of the project history. Executive managers usually rely on weekly or monthly status reports from project managers for project status.

This leaves the information about the projects in the hands of the project manager. The use of groups in e-mail is very common.

Project managers may e-mail an entire group about a project. Team members complain about the volume of e-mails they receive and the burden of finding those that are most relevant to them.

Instead of spending time working on tasks, many team members are wasting time sifting through e-mail messages. If new resources join the effort midstream, a centralized location for communication helps new resources get up to speed rapidly by reviewing the entire project history.

This is best addressed by Web-based collaborative and project systems that post all relevant project information in one place. For project teams with client facing projects, centralized communication helps to resolve questions and issues that arise on projects and tasks. The communication may be referred to for clarification of scope, goals, and other key decisions made during the project.

For teams that must comply with regulatory bodies, maintaining all of the project communication in one place is imperative. Good processes should be implemented that are customized for the business. Outside consultants may be needed to help define these processes. Software solutions that support these processes may need to be used and supported by top management.

For projects to succeed, executive management must show leadership by spending time to plan, set goals, and pick strategies prior to starting projects. Team members must begin work once task assignments have been communicated.

West, Ph. Challenge 1: Lack of Visibility of all Projects Many projects fail when one or more participating groups does not have access to the right level of information at the right time. Solution 1: Publish Projects to a Visible Location The best solution combines tools, processes, and people-based changes. Challenge 2: Unclear Project Objectives Most organizations have more project initiatives than they can ever hope to complete.

IT's biggest project failures -- and what we can learn from them

Why do projects fail? If only there was a simple answer. Even with the best intentions and a highly motivated team, every experienced project manager knows that any number of unforeseen problems and challenges can derail even the best-laid projects. Whatever industry you operate in, the planning phase of a project is critical.

5 common reasons for project failure within agencies and how to avoid them

This piece of research utilises practice-based and academic literature relating to success and failure factors in projects, with the aim to address failure risk factors and have higher success probabilities in IT projects within organisations, especially in the healthcare context. The four key published papers that will be extensively used to ensure the research question is answered will be:. Factors associated with success in the implementation of information management and technology in the NHS Bowns et al, The literature review starts by clearly examining the survey data available in regards to project success rates. This is then followed by explaining what could have been done to enhance NPfIT success in regards the identified eight contributing failure factors. Following an exploratory and descriptive research design, it has been attempted identify how the NHS can avoid future Information Technology project failures and achieve success. A critical review and analysis of the already existing studies from reliable and experienced authors was used to identify current IT project failures and the key critical factors required for success to be achieved Dhir et al. Moreover, a focus has been placed on the cultural aspect of NHS to clearly outline and address the processes and activities Baghizadeh et al.

The 10 causes of project management failure

The quote by Roger Von Oech gives a glimmer of hope to those project managers and organizations that have to cope with failing projects. Now, we all know that if only things could go as well as planned, there would be no hiccups, stumbles, loss, and failures. Sounds too rosy. Amidst all the positivity, project failures do indeed happen. Project failure is a grave concern for many organizations.

Project Management: Failures Reasons, Myths & The Methodologies

Pells, , published here December with permission. A number of studies and surveys have been conducted in recent years that have highlighted problems and failures related to IT projects. A summary of the following surveys can be found at the IT Cortex website. The Chaos Report The first survey by the Standish Group is perhaps the most famous study on this topic. The Standish Group surveyed IT executives in large, medium and small organizations across major industry segments. The respondents represented 8, applications; focus groups meetings and personal interviews were also conducted.

Ten Strong Reasons Why Projects Fail (And How To Kick Them Out)

Skip to search form Skip to main content Skip to account menu. Executive In recent years, IT project failures have received a great deal of attention in the press as well as the boardroom. In an attempt to avoid disasters going forward, many organizations are now learning from the past by conducting retrospectives—that is, project postmortems or post-implementation reviews. While each individual retrospective tells a unique story and contributes to organizational learning, even more insight can be gained by examining multiple retrospectives across a variety of… Expand. View Paper. Save to Library Save. Create Alert Alert.

Three Disastrous Project Management Failures

Managing a project from A to Z is often a real challenge that requires a lot of work, rigor, and involvement. This is a source of significant financial loss for companies, as well as demotivates employees. For a project to be considered a success, the project team must have produced the planned deliverables on time and within budget. According to a PwC study conducted in , only 2.

Software, training, certifications and even Masters degrees — everything you can imagine — to make us better at managing simple and complex projects. But we keep failing. Over and over again. Is there a solution?

Updated Over a Week Ago. Estimated reading time: 4 minutes. Although there are always going to be project management failures software can help avoid this. Unfortunately, it usually takes quite a bit of time to wind up one project. Of course, not all projects have the same issues and dilemmas, but the results of said issues are often the same.

Learn More. There are many factors and conditions that determine whether your project will be successful, or not. Learn how to avoid project failure factors and how to implement project management success factors that can propel your team to success. Following some critical success factor examples and learning project success factors can help you gain a better understanding of how effective project managers plan, communicate, manage risk, and successfully close projects.