Why do projects fail?

Why do projects fail? This is a question that would comprise loads of answers. Well first and for most let me define what a project is. A project is an assignment, task or obligation that will give solution or solve any dilemma within a particular matter. A project is a set of tasks that must be executed or performed within a fixed period or time limit. A project must observe time management that must be convened in order to achieve goals. It has to observe scope and limitation. In making a project there are lots of factors that must be considered to make it flourishing. Project Management or the method of planning, organizing and managing assets to be productive and being able to succeed on definite purposes and objectives is very important in a project. Without proper management of projects failure would surely be a result of it. As what has been mentioned above, project has lots of factors to be considered and without looking consideration into these dynamics, failure will be inevitable. 

Last time on our discussions, our instructor Sir Randy mentioned some reasons why projects do fail. It was based on the PM book of knowledge. With the discussion we had I have acquired information as to what factors can make projects fail. It includes the following: 
♪Poor Estimates can lead to project failure. Planning is a very important step in project management. Poor planning could be the reason of poor estimate. Bad estimates direct to bad cost projections which in the end associate to poor release. The trouble being when estimates are wanted for efforts to be completed to project costs. Often a project is estimated for supply effort before it is budgeted. Poor estimates can also be the liability of the client, stakeholders. 
♪Scopes Changes can also lead to project failure. To Control and to manage scope change is critical to the success of any projects because scope changes can significantly affect the cost, schedule, hazards and quality of the total effort. It could also be difficult on the project team to lack direction or to change scopes. They must work hand on hand in order to solve this kind of uncertain event.
♪Work Breakdown Failures. A work breakdown must be structured well otherwise it can affect your project along the way.
♪Not enough time/resources allocated. Estimation mistakes of time or resource cause project related problems. One common problem during the creation of the Work Breakdown Structure is assuming that the time on task equals duration. The time on task is the time the task will take to complete without interruptions, whereas duration is the time the task actually take to complete including interruptions. 
♪One of the reasons is having an incompetent project manager. Choosing a responsible and outstanding manager should be checked. The manager should be competent and can handle risks and can adapt easily to possible changes.
♪Ineffective use of Project Management discipline and process can make projects fail. Proper education on project management must be learned before indulging into a real project in order to secure project efficiency and to have enough knowledge to solve possible project risks that may occur. Ineffective use of project management disciple and correct process can really affect. Disciplines must be observed because it will serve as guides to achieve goals in a project.
♪Lack of proper management support, if your team doesn’t work hand in hand your project will really fail just like the saying no man is an island. In large projects human resource is much needed in order to divide responsibilities in order to give focus on different aspects, you cannot be successful on handling everything just by yourself. If you talk about large projects you must need a team that would work independently on the fields assigned to them. Projects sometimes fail due to improper communication along the team, so this must also be considered. 
Lastly is the wrong use of technology. Use of proper technology must also be observed in order to succeed on your goals.

Those were the things that must be observed and prevented in order to make your projects succeed. As I browse and read on the internet I have found this statement to ponder on. According to Bryce’s Law, “It must be remembered that project management is first and foremost a philosophy of management, not an elaborate set of tools and techniques. It will only be as effective as the people who use it.” Some companies ask why they fail on their projects and on their project management. It is because some things that are happened to be not observed or wasn’t given enough attention. Some companies see project management only as a tool or technique and not a must. In this case they only evaluate project management as a supplement and not a must in order to achieve goals. Well in fact a company can achieve its objective if they will consider project management as a must thing to consider. If they suppose project management as an essential piece of the company’s general performance, it will be more successful rather than a business who regards it as of no importance. In other words, Project Management is a fundamental part of the business background. And also, practicing proper project management can help on preventing project risks or could help on solving unexpected events and problems that would come along the way in your project. Project management can be considered as one of the major factors why a project fails since project management is the process where in you will plan, set goals, brainstorm, implement and solve. It is the way you coordinate with your team in implementing proper ways in order to not to fail your project. In addition it is being a manager or possessing skills of a manger could also be a reason of project failure. Instead of being a manger, one should be a leader. Managerial skills are needed but leadership is more of a must. Several may think that a leader and a manager are the similar yet they are not. An effective manager will have leadership qualities and "manager" will be only one facet of a "LEADER." A Leader has a natural set of talents with the purpose of inspiring people to follow, to be loyal, and to produce while a manager demands and directs dependently. Being a leader is what we all need and not just a manager that would direct us on things we must do. If we will be managers then we are dependent on others faculties. We cannot work on our own which leads to failure while if we will be leaders then we will possibly be successful on our endeavors. Success in being a good follower lies in picking the right leader.
Aside from what mentioned there also some aspects that we can regard as the reasons of why do project fail. These things comprise the following: 
The lack of knowledge, ignorance, backwardness, illiteracy, lack of education, unknowing or whatever they call is one of the things that can bring breakdown. It is a fact that knowledge on the things you do is important. But some say that they don’t consider knowledge as power. If knowledge were power, all smart people would be powerful and no stupid people would be. Nevertheless, knowledge is a powerful resource. As mentioned, just a resource and not a power, and it’s a resource you can never have too much of. I know someone once said a little knowledge can be hazardous; that not true because no matter what is taking place in your professional or personal life right now, you can always cultivate knowledge. The process of learning strengthens the mind, cultivates emotional and spiritual resources and increases your reserve of knowledge. The same as in a project I could say that lack of knowledge is not an excuse since it would really affect the progression of your project. Some managers, laborers and members in a project team may lack basic information of the technicalities of a Project Management. Having this situation, you may be prone to failure. Once you get into a project you must look at its elements carefully. I mean you have to study deeply about the things that would regard on it. You may not have knowledge but you can acquire it by working hard on achieving such. A project management team must know largely about the project that they will be conducting since it is very critical to indulge into sometime where in you don’t have enough knowledge about it. Lack of knowledge would affect the phases of planning, coordinating, setting objectives, and almost the overall production of the project. By having not enough information on your project you cannot easily adopt changes and give solution immediately to the risks that will occur.
Lack of organizational policy could be a reason of failure. In your team or company you must set policies to be followed in order for you to be guided throughout the period of your project. You must adopt formal policy for the management of your project. There are lots of benefits that can be acquired from setting organizational policies. Organizational policies are principles or regulation to guide the team in discerning or making decisions and achieve rational outcomes. OF course of you have policies then there would be discipline this would help a lot. Your team members would not dependent on others and would work effectively with the help of the policy that would also serve as a motivation for them.

Another factor is the lack of enforcement of policy and procedure. After implementing organizational policies you also need to enforce the policy and the procedure that you made. Even though a policy has been recognized, it is not enforced. As a result, conflicting consequences come out. If a normal and constant approach to Project Management is formulated, it should be routinely policed in order to make sure that it would be accurate and have uniform results. As what I have grasped from somewhere it is one thing to enact legislation, quite another to enforce it. 


An additional thing is the lack of consideration for the magnitude and complexities of project management. As what Bryce’s law states it must be remembered that project management is not first and foremost a philosophy of management, not an elaborate set of tools and techniques, nor is it an administrative function. Rather, it is concerned with managing 
human beings towards the accomplishment of work (it is a "people management"
function). As such, project management will only be as effective as the 
people who use it. Thus, failure could happen by giving no consideration on the scope of project management and how hard is it to manage a project. If you lack of consideration for the magnitude and complexities of project management you wouldn’t be able to identify some estimates properly and solve problem easily.
The stakeholder conflicts could also be disadvantage in a project. Stakeholder conflicts can cause lots of different roles of project failures. Frequently, stakeholders comprise personal basis for not being able to work together. Misunderstanding and such should be avoided. Personal conflicts with the stakeholders can largely affect and can cause delay, ineffectiveness and unproductivity of projects. Since stakeholders don’t work hand in hand then it is really a big problem if there will be no solidarity in a project. Pride and ego must be set aside because almost always it will end in some disaster. Sometimes other projects fail because the developers do not know who the "real" stakeholders are. For many businesses, how they handle these conflicts is a significant component of their business. Get it right and the business is able to improve and grow. Get it wrong and it could spell problems for the business. Communication is important in a business. So you must have good relationship and communication with the stakeholdsers.

Another thing is about the vague requirements of a project. In a project management scope is important. IT is an element. You have to identify clear requirements. Even in the starting part of the process which is in planning. Identifying requirements must take place. This should be one of the points that must be discussed before going on to the project. So for this to be prevented a solution is to create a sensibly stable requirements baseline before proceeding to any other work. But even when this is made, requirements could still persist to sneak. For instance in your project, you had already classified patent requirements. Let’s us state a project like creating a system for a company. You have already settled and identified the requirements needed but after meeting the given requirement the customer or client would demand for another feature. But in this case time would be the factor to be adjusted a lot. At least by knowing the complete requirements needed clearly it will not be that much risky.

Poor cost and schedule estimation one of the most occurring problems in a project. This problem happens when someone makes up a number and won't listen to anyone about how long other projects took. Projects are often purposely underbid for the reason that of the attitude that putting a development team under adequate stress can get them to bring almost anything. It is true that pressure can increase the quantity of results one receives, but after it severely diminishes the quality of those results. In fact, pressure sometimes produces the opposite of its intended effect. For instance is a data structure machine problem. The machine problem should logically need five members or programmers (to be more pleasant to hear) and a month to accomplish but instead you are given four programmers and 2 weeks, you will have to skimp on design time and on quality checks to reach project milestones. Cutting a bend that challenges the whole foundation of the project is not cutting the bend. There will roughly certainly be deeply uneven costs downstream. Time management is very important in a project. If one couldn’t meet the time period or deadline it will surely be a failure. I will set an example of a time management failure. Last semester in our Network Technologies1 subject, we were given a final project of creating a network system for USEP’s 5 campus. We were given enough time to accomplish such project yet others failed to comply. Perhaps I can say I with my partner would almost fail also but fortunately we were able to meet the risks that occurred. With our project we were provided instructions and criteria to be followed. The whole finals period were allotted for us to complete our final project. Because of having no proper time management some of us started to make the project a week before its deadline in which that week was scheduled for our field trip, some of us made our project when we arrived at the hotel and some wasn’t able to do so for the reason of being tired because of the trip. On our case with my partner before we depart for the trip we already made the foundation or the structure of the network using CISCO packet tracer yet we still didn’t made the IP addressing and more in which is the hardest part. So we finished our project on the day before the deadline which brought pressure and stress. I almost gave up because it was hard. But many of our classmates weren’t able to succeed because of having no proper time management and sticking to the habit of making the project the day before the submission deadline.

Lack of skills or skills that do not match the job can also be a reason. Of this one is very obvious but often unnoticed. In the project you must include the accurate people to do the right job. There is no getting around it. For example in programming, programmers need to have experience in the technology before you can count on them, so select them wisely. You should not just hire someone that knows nothing about programming. Furthermore, managers can perform poorly if they lead projects that do not match their strengths. Projects dealing with high technology need managers with solid technical skills. For instance in projects like building, you shouldn’t hire IT specialists, teachers, businessman, etc. but of course you must have engineers, architect and such. In such projects, authority must reside with people who understand the inferences of precise technical risks. Nevertheless, the best technologists are not unavoidably always poised to be the best managers. The skill set for management and programming are dislodged. The larger the project, the more need there is for people with excellent planning, oversight, organization, and communications skills; all excellent technologists do not necessarily have these abilities.

Failure to plan is a big drawback. Planning is the first and most important thing to be considered. In project management planning is the first step to make. As what I can remember it was stated by our instructor that planning is the most important step in project management. If you fail to plan then bigger possibility of failure or possibly it will result to failure immediately. If we fail to plan then we will fail. Planning is important because this is the stage of brainstorming, setting goals, arranging schedules and more. Thus, planning should be considered most to prevent failure.

Lastly, this statement was brought up by our instructor. Most of us fail in our projects because we PLAN TO FAIL AND NOT WE FAIL TO PLAN. Such as our projects and final requirements, we failed perhaps because of even at the start of it we already planned to fail. We didn’t give our best and showed efforts in achieving our goals especially to pass. We disregarded some factors that must be considered. We didn’t manage our time properly, we didn’t consider ourselves as leaders and we let ourselves become lazy students. Therefore it is not appropriate for us to say that we failed because we failed to plan but we failed because we planned to. With this statement we realized a lot of things that we must improve and must motivate us in acquiring good skills and proper project management.


References : http://www.adaptivepartners.com/projfailb.htm
http://www.4u-2.com/business/business-project-management/why-does-project-management-fail/