Have you ever wondered why projects fail and how you can avoid this?
We'll watch this video because I'm going to share with you five reasons why projects fail and what you can do about it.
Stay tuned to the end of this video too, because if you want to be a project Ninja,
I have some cool things to share with you that are going to help you succeed.
Hi, if you're new here, welcome. My name is Adriana Gerdler.
I'm a business productivity specialist and a project management professional, AKA project
Ninja, and I am excited to have you here, if you could subscribe to my channel so that
you can Excel in your career as well as get some really great additional tips and project management.
Please do so. Hit that subscribe bell button bell.
I have been a project manager for over 20 plus years and I can attest to these project failures.
It's the same thing that I see over and over again. in every type of
industry, so don't fall into these same traps, so let's get to it and go through these project failures.
Project failure, number one, dodging conflict.
All right.
I know sometimes it can be really difficult to address conflict, but when you're a project
manager and you're running a project and a bunch of people are in it on your team, you have
to, you have to, address that elephant in the room immediately.
If not, it spirals out of control, which then spirals to impacting your project timeline,
scopes, budget, etc. So you really need to address things.
There are some really cool videos that I have on communication and team building that you
can check out, but it is important that you do not avoid conflict.
You're the manager, the project manager.
That is your job knowing to ensure that things get done, but that people are doing it in a way that is productive.
Project failure Number two, team expectations are vague or unrealistic, so it is critical.
Your success as a project manager is dependentupon the team executing their task, so it
is important that you are so clear and expectations are really set out from day one with your team.
Here's the other caveat too.
They don't report into you.
So you got to motivate them in order to get the work done by the due dates that you all agreed to.
So it is really important and your job to be checking in with them, remove the roadblocks,
make sure that everybody is on the same page and that is going to help out tremendously.
And if you can do that, that's a big part of why projects fail because people are not clear.
Project failure number three, Poor Communication.
So as a project manager, it's your job to present all the communication for the team.
Now one of the problems I see all the time is that it's only said once.
So this poor communication, the answer is over communicate.
People get distracted.
You can be in a meeting and all of a sudden their phone is vibrating and they'd not hearing
anything you said or you've been given information, but they could be checking email.
Who the heck knows it happens?
Even if you have rule of saying, please don't do that.
So it's really important to over communicate, ensure that you're constantly reinforcing
your messages and repeat, check in with your team as well.
Can you please let me know, did you understand what I was asking?
Are you good with that date?
Get them to reply back to you.
That's just going to validate what you're looking to have done and all part of communication.
project failure number four, the non project manager.
So I'm going to put a little disclaimer in here or preface to say, this
is not the fault of the non project manager.
What happens is, people are really successful at what they do.
So all of a sudden they get promoted or they're asked to run this really large project, but
they may be an accountant, but yet they're being asked to run a project and it really
is at the fault of the leadership because they don't understand that project management
actually is a skillset and it's those skills that you need in order to really run successful projects.
So what happens for non project manager is that they don't have the skills, they're trying
to scramble, and they always feel like they're behind the eight ball and as a result not
giving the team what they need, whatever that may be, communication, conflict resolution,
documents, plans, whatever, etc.
But if you can understand that, if you get thrown in that position and
let me know in the comments below, if you ever have been thrown in that position, there
are things that you can do, you can understand the basics of project management, not only
that and want you to check out a link cause I have a real cool course for you just for
those non project managers to help you be successful with projects.
Because I promise you, projects are strategic initiatives within an organization.
They're usually high profile.
You really want to do a good job on them and that's why non-project managers have been put into that role.
Then guess what?
If your leadership team is not going to set you up for success, then you need to set yourself up for success.
Critical project failure number five, poor risk management or new risk management.
Okay. A lot of times organizations and individualsdon't really think of risk because they usually
get a project and they're just moving forward,but I promise you, risk is part of a project.
They do happen and you really need to be managing these.
Even if you just do a simple kind of analysis like what would be some risks that are going
to happen to this particular project, you'll be surprised.
One of the biggest risks I see over and over again is, my team members are being pulled
onto different things and so I'm not going to have the committed time that I'm supposed to get from them.
That creates a big risk to the project success, particularly the timeline, right?
Happens all the time.
If it did for you, let me know in the comment below.
So this becomes important because if you know this to be true, then you need to put some
sort of mitigation and contingency plan in place and you want to do this at the beginning
of the project with your sponsors and senior executives.
Have them own this.
This is a risk that you're identifying, that's your job, but you need to get help in regards to resolving it.
So it's a team activity.
Look at those risks.
Don't ignore it.
It will bite you in the arse.
Now that you know the top five reasons why project fails, guess what?
There's more.
Get the other five in this download from below and I'm going to give you all of them in this download.
Fantastic, useful piece of information as well.
If you're a new project manager, a must please subscribe to my channel and if you
could like this video and share it with all the professionals and friends that you know,
that would be so appreciative.
Let me know if you've experienced any of these failures or if you're doing them.
I would love to hear from you.
I read the comments and definitely reply to you if you have any questions about failures
that you're experiencing on that note, until the next video, see you later.