6 Reasons Project Plans Fail

  Manufacturing   ProjectsAtWork  

From simple problems to complex, and everything in between, there are many pitfalls that can plague a project. And with low-performing organizations wasting nearly 12 times more resources than high-performing ones on failed projects, there’s no time like the present to address the causes and implement much-needed changes.

Bad projects are expensive. In fact, organizations lose a whopping $109 million for every $1 billion invested in projects and programs, according to a Project Management Institute (PMI) study. And the bigger the projects are, the harder they fall. Large projects are 10 times more likely to fail outright, according to another industry report, and two times more likely to be late, over budget and missing critical features when compared with smaller projects. While small and medium projects may not be quite as fraught with peril, anyone who’s worked on them knows they certainly aren’t without their woes.

So, what are the culprits behind these epic and not-so-epic fails? According to PMI, common causes of project failure range from changing priorities within an organization (40 percent) to limited resources (20 percent). While some may be out of our control as project managers, many are not.

Here are six not-so-obvious reasons why a project plan can quickly go awry:

1. Static methods — Today, projects have a lot of moving parts. Whether…

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