Project ManagementAccording to a Standish group report, enterprises in United States spend more than $250 billion each year on IT development, approximately 175,000 projects. The research further shows that a staggering 31.1% of projects will get cancelled before they ever get completed and 52.7% of approved projects will cost 189% of their original estimates. According to PMI’s Pulse 2014, organizations are losing an average of US$109 million for every US$1 billion spent on projects. These are staggering numbers, ones that scream failure. In post mortem, project failure gets defined in different ways, attributed to different reasons. In my mind, a project fails when it doesn’t fulfill the objectives that were set at the time of commissioning. It could be a budget overrun, a significant delay in delivery, a quality lapse or way too much iteration. One could argue that as long as it is complete and delivered to the stakeholders or customers, it is successful. No, I don’t buy it. There is no such thing as small or large failure. The point is a project is commissioned to achieve a certain business outcome with certain defined parameters and constraints. If they are not met it is a failure. Period! So why do projects fail? In this blog we will look at 5 major factors that contribute to project failure.
