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Project Management Failure Issues

The document discusses common causes of project management failure based on a literature review. It identifies poor planning, unclear objectives, unrealistic estimates, lack of executive support, poor communication, and inappropriate staffing as frequent root causes. Additional contributors include inexperience, insufficient oversight, unrealistic pressure from management, multi-tasking resources, and failure to prioritize or terminate projects appropriately. The research aims to analyze project failure causes to help organizations avoid failures and the wasted time and money they entail. Surveys and interviews of companies will be used to gather data on specific failures for analysis.

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Nicole Patricia Alinea Noguera
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322 views3 pages

Project Management Failure Issues

The document discusses common causes of project management failure based on a literature review. It identifies poor planning, unclear objectives, unrealistic estimates, lack of executive support, poor communication, and inappropriate staffing as frequent root causes. Additional contributors include inexperience, insufficient oversight, unrealistic pressure from management, multi-tasking resources, and failure to prioritize or terminate projects appropriately. The research aims to analyze project failure causes to help organizations avoid failures and the wasted time and money they entail. Surveys and interviews of companies will be used to gather data on specific failures for analysis.

Uploaded by

Nicole Patricia Alinea Noguera
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Project management failure issues

Define the background

A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end, usually


constrained by date, but can be by funding or deliverables (Chatfield) and undertaken to
meet unique goals and objectives (Nokes). According to the Project Management
Institute and the VA Office of Information and Technology, the project development
stages or major process groups generally include:
• Initiation
• Planning or development
• Production or execution
• Monitoring and controlling
• Closing

Project Management is done by IT and business unit managers in order to enforce a


project plan which includes job responsibilities, time lines for major stages of
development, and financial budgets (O’Brien). Unfortunately, not all projects are
successful; many projects fail, with failure being described as those projects that do not
meet the original time, cost and quality requirements criteria.
The results of a study by Boston-based Novations Group indicate that 35 percent felt
that their organization normally managed to execute projects effectively, whereas four
out of 10 said that they sometimes experienced delays and cost overruns, and a quarter
frequently seeing projects blighted by major delays and cost overruns (Amble).
Meanwhile, according to John McManus and Trevor Wood-Harper, only one in eight
information technology projects can be considered successful, whereas almost one in four
projects are abandoned after the feasibility stage of those projects completed

Literature review

According to Taimour Al Neimat, the following lists the primary causes for the
failure of complex IT projects:
• Poor planning
• Unclear goals and objectives
• Objectives changing during the project
• Unrealistic time or resource estimates
• Lack of executive support and user involvement
• Failure to communicate and act as a team
• Inappropriate skills

"The amateurish management of high-priced undertakings is a problem organizations


fail to acknowledge," said John Rahiya, Novations executive consultant. "Companies
continue to waste shareholder equity, and there's seldom accountability. Overruns and
missed target dates seem to be taken for granted." Others problems included
inexperience, too little oversight by senior management and too much pressure from
senior management (Amble). Moreover, failure is likely if the management is not
supportive of the project and if the project manager does not take the stakeholders’
expectations seriously (softwaremalpractice.wordpress.com).

In addition to these, other sources of project failure (according to


focusedperformance.com) are the following:
• lack of appreciation for the impact of a multi-project environment on single
project success
• waste of resources through dedication to projects (making them unavailable to
support other projects)
• failure of management to provide real guidance on priority of projects before they
are planned and promised.
• ignoring rational plans and promises for perceived, but questionable, priorities
• failure of management to kill projects when their reason for existence goes away
• irrational promises made due to a failure to take into account the variable nature
of task performance and/or project networks
• insufficient identification of dependencies necessary to deliver the project
• focus on (and active management of) only a portion of what should be the full
project
• reliance on due-date, train-schedule, and actual-against-budget-to-date
performance to drive project performance, resulting in the wasting of any safety
included in the project
wasting of resources through underutilization because they aren't the "best resource" for
the job
• wasting of the "best" resources through over-utilization, multi-tasking, and burn-
out
• multi-tasking, which impacts single project durations (and wastes safety) when
dedicated resources are expected to perform several roles.

Research objectives

The objectives of the research are to identify and analyze the causes of project
management failures, in order to avoid project failures in the future. Huge sums continue
to be invested in information systems projects and written off despite high project failure
rates; for example, the cost of project failure across the European Union was €142 billion
in 2004 (McManus and Wood-Harper). Imagine all the money and effort that had gone
to waste. In addition to the effects on the company’s budget and production quality, team
morale is inevitably damaged in the process (Amble). All of these can be avoided by
investigating the causes of project failures.

Research plan

For this research proposal, the methodologies to be used are literature overview
and handing out surveys and questionnaires to companies, with the data results to be
gathered, analyzed and interpreted accordingly.
Sources:

Amble, Brian. “Amateur management leads to project failure.”


http://management-issues.com/2007/5/11/research/amateur-management-leads-to-
project-failure.asp

Amble, Brian. “Silence - the root cause of project failure.”


http://www.management-issues.com/2006/10/11/research/silence-the-root-cause-of-
project-failure.asp

Chatfield, Carl. "A short course in project management."


http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HA102354821033.aspx.

FP. “Top 10 Sources of Project Failure.”


http://www.focusedperformance.com/toptenpm.html

McManus, John and Trevor Wood-Harper. “A study in project failure.”


http://www.bcs.org/content/ConWebDoc/19584

“Major Issues on Software Project Failure.”


http://softwaremalpractice.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/major-issues-on-software-project-
failure

Nokes, Sebastian. “The Definitive Guide to Project Management.” 2nd Ed.n. London
(Financial Times / Prentice Hall): 2007.

O’Brien, James & George Marakas. “Management Information Systems, 7th Edition.”
Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill. 2006.

PMI: Project Management Institute (2010). “A Guide to the Project Management Body of
Knowledge.” http://www.pmi.org/

VA Office of Information and Technology (2003) Project Management Guide US


DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS.

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