Top Ten Reason of An Unsuccessful Project Management

There are ways too many reasons that people can make up for the failure of a project, sometimes there are no single causes for unsuccessful project, but a combination of factors. There are many dependencies which contribute to a successful project and each of these dependencies are equally important.

The top 10 reasons that have driven failed projects are:

Reason No. 1: Project sponsors are lack of good understanding on the objectives of the project
They often appear to be lacking of commitment, as they have not being actively involved in the project strategy and direction.

Reason No. 2: Some projects do not meet the strategic vision of the company nor does it meet the business needs
Such projects will definitely fail to get delivered as there is no clear clue as of why the project needs to be launched in the first place. Some are initiated purely to implement new technology without considering if there is a business need for this. The converse of this is a project that does not support existing technology, resulting in major scope creep and resultant expenditure.

Reason No. 3: Staffing is often a key reason for failure
Cases like lack of dedicated project manager and its team members have been allocated to the projects. Or it may be due to the lack of experience among the team and the essential qualifications and attributes do not exist.

Reason No. 5: Incomplete or unclear project scope
No clear benefits have been called up to justify the existence of the project and no key deliverables have been spelled out. In many of these projects which failed later on, a project plan is often undefined, out of date, incomplete or poorly constructed. Starting a project without a well defined plan is not acceptable at all in multi-national or renowned company because it is similar to a ship without clear direction.

Reason No. 6: Insufficient funding, and incorrect budgeting
The reason above is still a major reason for projects not delivering their goals and objectives within the quality framework and timeframe which was require. This may be due to a poor planning or the company resources have been miss-used in some other areas which forced the initial budget to be cut later.

Reason No. 7: No formal project management methodologies and best practices
In most companies, the management just do not feel the need to invest money in the best of breed methodologies to facilitate the deliveries of their projects and to build any knowledge base within the company. No formal project management methodologies and best practices, which are more aligned to the company’s specific needs are there to assist the project performance.

Reason No. 8: Lack of formal signed off process at the initial stage
Most of the failed project did not go through a formal signed off process at the beginning of the project itself to signify the necessary assumption, dependencies, stake-holders, priorities, benefits and costs, as well as the key deliveries and the challenges expected from the project itself. With the lack of this process at the initial stage, all the necessary team members do not share the same assumptions, expectation, perspective and objective for the same project.

Reason No. 9: No good end to end testing before signing off and stabilization
Every project will not be completed without a good end to end testing before the signing off and stabilization. In many occasions, projects failed to get delivered on time because the team leads or project managers did not manage to engage all the necessary test resources for the final testing ahead of time.

And when they realized that the necessary resources have not being properly engaged for complete integrity testing, it is often too late as the resources from other teams have been locked for other initiatives or project.

As a result, the testing progress will be impact and this will affect the overall synergy and status of the project negatively.

Reason No. 10: Lack of good communication
One of the key factor to ensure the success of a project, especially a huge project is great communication from Top-down and vertical across all segments and functional teams.

Good communications ensure great ideas are shared between the team members. It is common for projects to fail due to the lack of alignment between IT solutions and business objectives. It is imperative that as an IT project manager , one understand the end customer needs. The more you relate to your end customer needs; the greater probability of success and lesser possibilities of rework and its associated challenges of schedule delays and cost overruns.

Other than the above ten key points which have been highlighted, procrastinating, allowing constant interruptions, and acting exaggeratedly rather than having good proactive planning are all habits to unsuccessful projects.