Project Failure
Why are we all getting it wrong?
“In December 2007, Gordon Brown was informed in the Commons that seven out of 10 projects had failed”
“A report has stated that £2bn of Government money has been spent on unsuccessful IT projects since 2000”.
Source: Dave Treby APM Project Magazine March 2008 - PM for 10 years. Works for Capgeminio
IT is a much publised area of project failure and numerous studies prove the case for IT projects and other topic areas.
For example:
The Passport Agency project - where IT problems in 1998 led to the cancellation of thousands of holidays and resulted in a £12m cost to taxpayers. The Child Support Agency IT phone system in 2003 - was 2 years late and £56m over budget, failure in the new system prevented transfer of over a million existing cases. The Benefits Payments Programme expected to save £60m was cancelled before completion. The National Health Service medical records and appointments booking system - a £6 billon project, subject to delays and major problems and the Criminal Records Bureau system - where Teachers with recorded sexual offences were cleared to work in schools.
Our own experience which is supported by numerous studies puts failure down to a number of key areas:
- Lack of sponsorship, leadership or management commitment.
- The Goal, objectives, boundaries or scope are unclear, change or ‘creep’.
- Insufficient time and effort spent at initiation and planning stages.
- Unrealistic or imposed time-scales.
- Bureaucracy and following processes for the sake of it.
- Competition for the same Resources in the organisation.
- ‘Stove pipe mentality’ - Functional / Organisational boundary ownership and issues.
- Natural resistance, the effects of change and Human factors.
- Failure to manage stakeholder expectations.
- Lack of formal project management process.
- No change control, poor reporting or escalation of issues.
- Lack of risk assessment and risk management.
- Project plans that are non-existent, out of date or not referred to.
- Communications - poor or none.
- People / Training Issues and inappropriate project resource.
- Too many competing initiatives or programmes.
- Failure to assess and track project cost & benefits.
- No formal signed off process or recording of lessons learnt.