[Music Intro]
>>Hello.
I'm Jennifer Whitt, Director of ProjectManager.com.
Well welcome to our whiteboard session today on the top ten reasons why projects fail.
I'm sure you've probably experienced some of these on your own.
But in one company I worked in, I was responsible for going in, recovering troubled projects.
So, I began to study the projects, what made the ones succeed, succeed, and what made the
ones fail, fail.
So, I've looked at a cross-section of these and over time, I've seen repeat causes of
projects failing.
There are all kinds of research done out there.
You can Google it and get probably over a million hits on why projects fail.
Gartner Group and some other organizations track this all the time.
But these are from my experience, and see if some of these are common.
Number one, unaligned expectations - unaligned expectations can still be unaligned even though
expectations have been set.
They've been agreed upon.
But I'm sure you've seen it yourself, where people leave the meetings and they go to their
respective organizations and they talk about how they're unaligned.
They don't agree.
Even though they've agreed on paper, organizations, groups or teams still don't have the same
expectations, so they are unaligned.
What happens is unconsciously people still start doing what they really want to do and
that comes into conflict.
Number two, implementing before the project is actually approved or baseline, so you've
seen it where in every organization or company, where companies are trying to get projects
executed and implemented.
Maybe they're trying to get first to market on a new product or maybe there's a need in
the organization or outside the organization.
Then, the team members maybe have experience in that organization so they know kind of
what's supposed to be done.
So, everybody starts running down the road before all the approvals, before the budgets,
before everything has been approved.
What happens is, people start doing things that maybe end up not being on the approved
or baseline plan.
Maybe budgets that people thought were going to get approved, don't get approved, so resources
don't get approved.
So, what happens is things already get worked on that are out of scope, outside the budget,
so that causes problems down the road.
Number three, inexperienced or untrained resources, so we all are fighting for resources and today
many organizations are trying to do more with less.
So, it's not uncommon to have resources on your team that are inexperienced or untrained.
That's something we have to deal with.
But the idea is that when we do set that situation up, without estimating things appropriately
and taking that into account, we get into trouble.
Because maybe a certain resource or certain person provided a certain task or produced
a certain deliverable in the past, so maybe have estimates from a previous project.
Well, if you put a new resource in place, maybe one that doesn't have the same experience,
skill sets as the other one and you're going off the old estimates, if you don't re-estimate
based on the experience or the skill sets of that resource, then they're probably not
going to be able to accomplish it in the same time.
So, it set's that person up for failure and it sets the project up for failure too.
Inadequate systems, meaning maybe this is a project where the resources are global or
they're remote.
Your team members are remote and maybe you need some access for people to be able to
collaborate, and update things.
So, without having the adequate systems where people can access things online, update them
in real-time, if they're inadequate things aren't going to be updated and people informed
appropriately.
So, number five, inaccessible systems, again, that gets back to maybe software, spreadsheets,
tools, templates are not online or critical resources on your projects can't get those
updated.
Maybe they can't even see them and view them.
Or even know what task they're responsible for, what deliverables they're to be producing
by what timeline.
They don't know the milestones.
So when these two aren't available then, again, that sets you up for failure or the team up
for failure.
Number six, team conflict, so for sure, when projects start failing or things start going
wrong, emotions start going high and team's start getting into conflict.
Everyone is at their worst at that time.
But it's common for teams to begin getting in conflict.
That can actually be the cause of some projects derailing, when teams get in conflict.
If you think of sports teams or maybe bands or I don't know if you're artistic or musically
inclined, but typically, where you have people together on the same team, then generally
they're working together.
So if your team is in conflict and fighting against each other, then that can lead to
the actual project failing and amplify it if it's not the cause.
Number seven, the "us" versus "them" mentality.
You've seen it where maybe different organizations, maybe sales and marketing don't get along,
or the marketing team doesn't like the IT team, because sales sell something and they
say IT can't get it done for their customer.
So, it doesn't matter what scenario, you've seen it all in your own organization.
But the "us" versus "them" leads to projects failing because
people stake their territory and they fight for their right.
They take their stand and so it just leads to more problems.
Number eight, misaligned resources, that's where maybe you've had to put someone in a
role.
Maybe again, they're not trained.
Maybe they're not experienced and they can't even do it.
They don't want to do it.
But if they're misaligned, if you don't set your resources, your people up for success,
then typically people don't do what they don't want to do.
We do what we love doing.
We do what we know how to do.
But when we start putting people in misaligned roles, then things don't get done on time
and that can lead to a big source of failure.
Number nine, switching priorities, so especially now a days with things, companies are changing
priorities on a regular basis, so if the priorities change within the organization and it's not
communicated to your team or your organization.
The project plan has gone back and re-baselined and people are still working off of those.
Maybe some of the priorities change and some of your critical resources or critical people
on the team get taken away.
Maybe some of the scope gets cut or the budget gets cut from your project and shifted to
another.
That leads to project failures, if you don't go back and baseline your project plan.
If you do go back and use good project management techniques, then it won't be considered a
failed project.
Number ten, uncontrolled Scope, that's where things changed due to changing priorities
or things changing, where the scope gets out of control.
Maybe people are committing to things outside the change control board.
That's why it's critical to have a change control board, to bring those scope requests
in.
Things that you run into during the project, give to the change control board and let them
handle those decisions.
But if those decisions aren't brought to the change control board, so your stakeholders
can analyze it and make decisions based on what the company needs are, then it just leads
to project failure.
So, these are some of the things that we feel like are the top ten reasons.
Our team at ProjectManager.com has been hard at work and trying to incorporate these ideas,
these principals, new ways to socialize and mobilize teams quickly and putting things
into the software.
If you're trying to plan accordingly and avoid these top ten reasons for your project to
potentially fail then sign up for our software at ProjectManager.com