Nothing in life is certain. When it comes to projects and project management, it’s not certain that the project will deliver to time, cost and quality within a defined scope. Nor is it certain that it will deliver or enable the outcomes or benefits intended. It is possible that the project will fail altogether or that costs or schedules will be exceeded.
In 2017, a report from the Project Management Institute (PMI) concluded that 14% of projects failed outright. However, it also stated that of the projects that didn’t fail outright, 31% didn’t meet their goals, 43% exceeded their initial budgets, and 49% were late.
Why projects fail
Search for the reasons for project failure online and you’ll find a host of references to scope, time, cost and quality. A good source, however, is the UK Office of Government Commerce (OGC)’s Common Causes of Failure. The publication is quite old now but as relevant as ever. Here are some of the causes cited - you will probably not be surprised by them:
Looking closer, these are essentially project management failure rather than project failure, the reasons for which fit into 3 categories:
- Project team members, support staff and executives may not have the right knowledge and experience to deliver the project.
- The approach to how the team works together to manage the project may not be unstructured, inappropriate or too bureaucratic.
- The organisation itself may be incapable of supporting the delivery of the project.
Reducing the risk of failure by developing your people
You need to be assured that you have the right people in the right role assigned to the right project at the right time. Your people need to:
- Have core technical competencies (such as risk management, scheduling and quality management).
- Understand the environment in which they operate (a project manager working on an IT project needs to have has different skills to one working in nuclear decommissioning for example).
- Exhibit appropriate behaviours and employ “soft skills” such as communication.
You can understand the competency of your project directors, project managers, and project support staff by assessing them against a recognised model such as the Association for Project Management (APM)’s competence framework.
Once you know more about your people, their personal development plans can be updated, ensuring they meet the needs of your organisation itself (future skills, capacity, etc.).
Reducing the risk of failure by enabling project teams to work better together
Improving team dynamics is about behaviours and “soft skills” such as leadership and conflict resolution. However, it’s also about the project management method and the lifecycle models that the organisation uses.
There should be a single, consistently used method for managing projects. A project management method is not just a collection of templates but is essentially a set of guiding principles and processes for managing a project. Neither is it likely to be taken “off the shelf” and used “as-is”; it needs to be tailored and made to work for you, not against you.
Referring back to individual knowledge and experience, it important that individual development plans include references to the organisation’s method. Some organisations use a “driving license” approach to ensure that project managers fully understand the organisation’s method before being allowed to manage projects of varying scale and complexity.
Consider also how a capable client could benefit from working with a capable supplier or how a capable client might struggle to work with a less capable supplier. Typically, when things go wrong, the weaker links in the supply chain can hide the problems until they become critical; it then falls to the client or prime contractor to take charge and recover.
Reducing the risk of failure by ensuring that your organisation is capable of delivering its projects
So, you have development plans in place for your project teams and a project management method in place, but projects or programmes are still failing, and you don’t know which ones will be next. The problem could be the organisation’s capability to deliver.
Firstly, the organisation needs to ensure that it has the right initiatives (projects, programmes and “business as usual” activities) at the right time – portfolio management.
Project and portfolio governance capability is also a key factor in successful delivery. Corporate governance structures need to become more supportive of a project environment, thereby reducing the risk of failure.
Assurance is an integral component of robust project governance and increases the likelihood of project and project management success. Typically, an organisation will operate a “3 lines of defence” approach to assurance.
Corporate cultural factors also influence project success or failure. These include motivation and reward, leadership and authority, relationships and behaviours, codes of conduct and the organisation’s work ethic.
Take-aways
There is, of course, no single answer to why projects fail; if there was, we’d understand what it is by now and could look forward to all projects succeeding.
Project failures are due to be a combination of factors that relate to the knowledge and experience of individuals, how the project team works together and how the organisation itself manages projects.
Understanding of “what good looks like” in each of these areas and learning from experience within a corporate culture of continual improvement has the potential to drastically reduce the risk of project failure. This can also lead to efficiencies within project management governance and controls. Of course, project management itself is important if continual improvement is to happen.