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.