Why Do Projects Fail?

This topic always interests me.  Mainly because so many projects fail.  You’d think we would have learned by now how to always get it right.  But there are just too many variables to really do that – and you never see the same ones in each engagement.  It’s usually a never-ending cycle of suprises biting us in the ‘you know where’ that we should have known about from past experiences or discussions with others but we just didn’t see coming.



Over the years I’ve run a lot of projects large and small, formal and informal.  And looking back, I’d have to say by my own criteria that at least 20% of them were failures to some degree.  Some were major flops.  I had a project that I took over from another project manager – so I guess it wasn’t always ‘mine’ – and the customer actually pulled the plug after spending $1.25 million dollars on it.  Ouch!  That one was a failure by more than just my strict criteria.



I’d like to discuss why – at least from my individual perspective – projects fail.  I want to hear feedback from all of you as well, because maybe by putting our collective heads together we can stop a couple of upcoming project failures – and save a career or two in the process!



So, here’s my list of the top reasons I see – or have experienced myself - for project failure:



Bad or lacking requirements



Requirements are the lifeblood of the project.  Don’t take the initial customer requirements and run with them because I’ve learned that 110% of the time they are not accurate or detailed enough.  Only the foolish project manager fails to ask more questions and dig deeper.  Bad requirements up front mean re-work later on.  And there’s no guarantee that the customer will ‘own’ that as their mistake.  They are just as likely to point the finger at the leader of the operation – and that’s you.  And that means a big ‘F’ for failure.  Slow things down, document requirements, and now the real issues before starting the work.



Poor communication



Communications is critical on projects and probably the most important task the project manager does throughout the entire engagement.  My team members always tell me that they get more emails from me than any other project manager they’ve worked for.  I may fall short in other areas sometimes, but this is one area that I do know I excel in.  And I’ve rarely had communication issues with customers.  But it takes effort and initiative.



If the customer feels that they are not being informed, one of two things will happen.  They’ll either sit on it till the end of the engagement and be an unsatisfied customer (not good) or they’ll go to your senior management and ask that you be replaced on the project (really not good).  The customer is rarely good at pointing this out to you because they often don’t see the underlying communication problem – it manifests itself as other things to them.  Communicate well, often, and honestly with the customer and you won’t have this problem.



Lack of customer involvement



Keeping the customer engaged can sometimes be a problem.  They have their ‘real’ work to do and they’ve charged you with this effort.  But they have assignments, too.  And you usually need information and participation from them to make the project work.  Keep them involved on weekly calls.  Assign them small info-gathering tasks when there’s nothing for them to do.  Don’t allow long gaps in between the things you request from them.  Make things up – anything to keep them continually engaged even if it’s to a small degree.  If you don’t do this you can lose them for long periods of time and that’s not good for you or the project.



Quality control issues



Delivering bad products to the customer is a quick way to fail.  Whether it’s a typo-filled document deliverable or a bug-ridden end solution, the customer is never going to be happy with a less than quality product being handed to them.  Peer review everything that passes from your teams hands to the customer.  Test and re-test.  Just make sure that you are providing a quality product in the end.