Voices on Project Management

By Peter Tarhanidis, Ph.D.

Many leaders accept failure as part of their learning to enhance their future and mature outcomes. At the beginning of a new year, we must reflect on the past year’s successes and failures. Reflecting on project failures in 2024 offers leaders valuable insights to foster success in 2025. Understanding these challenges, supported by data and examples, is crucial for leaders aiming to enhance project outcomes in 2025.

Here are some notable quotes and perspectives on failure and resilience:

• Failure as the stepping stone to success: "Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." — Robert F. Kennedy.
• The power of perseverance: "The secret of life is to fall seven times and to get up eight times." — Paulo Coelho
• The need to take risks: "Risk is not to be evaluated in terms of the probability of success but by the value of the goal." — Ralph D. Winter

Leaders should reflect on 2024 project failures with a focus on identifying root causes, assessing systemic issues, and implementing actionable lessons. Below are examples of challenges organizations and leaders faced or continue to struggle with:

1. Poor resource management: Inefficient allocation of resources led to project delays and budget overruns. TeamStage’s 2024 survey cites 60% of respondents identified poor resource management as their biggest challenge. Prosymmetry illustrates this impact; the Denver International Airport's automated baggage handling system faced severe delays and budget overruns due to inadequate resource allocation and management.
2. Lack of defined project management methodologies: The absence of standardized processes resulted in inconsistent project outcomes. Plaky’s 2024 survey indicates that 42% of project managers do not follow a defined project management methodology, making their projects 15% less likely to meet goals and stay within budget. Prosymmetry 2024 shares an example of when the Ford Edsel project failed due to the absence of a clear project management methodology, resulting in misaligned objectives and market misjudgment.
3. Unrealistic deadlines: Setting unattainable timelines leads to compromised quality and team burnout. Tempo 2024 states that 31% of project managers reported unrealistic deadlines as a top challenge. A key highlight noted by the Project Management blog is when the FBI's Virtual Case File project was abandoned after four years and $170 million spent, primarily due to setting unattainable deadlines that led to incomplete and faulty deliverables.
4. Insufficient budget: Unsurprisingly, underfunded projects struggled to procure necessary resources, affecting deliverables. Exploding Topics 2024 survey notes that 17% of project managers cited insufficient budget as a significant challenge. ProjectManager blog cites the California DMV's IT modernization project was canceled after $135 million was spent over nine years, largely due to chronic underfunding and budget mismanagement.
5. Poor project quality: Without the voice of the customer, deliverables failed to meet stakeholder expectations, necessitating costly revisions. This was noted by the Exploding Topics 2024 survey by 13% of project managers, who identified poor project quality as a major issue. ProjectManager blog notes the Healthcare.gov website launch in 2013 suffered from numerous glitches and downtime due to inadequate testing and quality assurance, leading to a poor user experience.

2025 Strategies to Ensure Success

1. Implement defined project management methodologies: Adopt a standardized framework like agile or waterfall to provide clear guidelines and improve project outcomes. Tempo 2024 confirms projects are 15% more likely to meet goals and stay within budget when following a defined methodology.
2. Set realistic deadlines: Engage stakeholders in setting achievable timelines based on resource availability and project scope. Leaders will reduce the risk of team burnout and maintain quality standards.
3. Ensure adequate budget allocation: Conduct thorough cost estimations during the planning phase to secure necessary funding. Leaders can prevent resource shortages and maintain project momentum.
4. Enhance project quality: Implement quality assurance processes and continuous improvement practices. Organizations can deliver products that meet or exceed stakeholder expectations, reducing rework.
5. Invest in resource management tools: Utilize project management software to optimize resource allocation and track progress. This will aid leaders in improving efficiency and in meeting project objectives.

By addressing these challenges with targeted strategies, leaders can build project maturity and drive more successful outcomes in 2025. What project challenges did you have in 2024, and what actions will you take to ensure success in 2025?

References

1. https://teamstage.io/project-management-statistics
2. https://www.prosymmetry.com/blog/4-famous-project-management-failures-and-what-to-learn-from-them
3. https://www.tempo.io/blog/failed-projects
4. https://plaky.com/learn/project-management/project-management-statistics
5. https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/failed-projects
6. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/project-management-stats

By Lynda Bourne

Accurately predicting project outcomes has always been difficult. The standard tools in use today for doing so don’t offer much help. These tools work on the assumption that the planned duration or cost of future work is the best option to use for calculating completion outcomes.

The significant exceptions to this approach are earned value (EV) and earned schedule (ES). EV, ES and some other tools do adjust future performance based on past performance to predict outcomes—and they have demonstrated significantly more accuracy as a consequence. But no mainstream control tools deal with the management opportunity to actively change future performance with the use of incentive and motivation.

The performance of any activity is influenced by:

• Management competence, in organizing the work and the workers
• The availability of the right resources, tools and equipment
• The skill of the workers
• Workers’ incentives and motivations. Incentives are extrinsic, while motivations are intrinsic.

Incentive Schemes and Motivation Theory

Incentives in the form of piece rates have been used since the commercial revolution of the 11^th and 12^th centuries. Then in the 20^th century, a range of more sophisticated payment schemes were introduced by management consultants looking to drive enhanced productivity (some of the better known are outlined in the chart above – click for more information).   

The word “piecework” first appears in writing around the year 1549. Under this system a worker is paid for each piece of work he produces. Since the 16^th century, a wide variety of incentive schemes have been developed to encourage productivity by directly linking payments to performance.

Individual schemes are either time-based, with incentives being paid for completing on time or early, or production-based, with workers paid based on the number of items produced.

Group incentive schemes reward team performance by paying a group bonus instead of individual bonuses. The bonus is distributed among all the employees of the organization or team.

From the 1920s onward, management researchers began to realize simple incentive schemes were not sufficient and a range of motivational theories were developed.

Management theorists are still debating whether it is possible to motivate a person or if motivation is an internal state that can be encouraged. However, there is a consistent view that when motivation is increased, productivity increases.

The Planning Conundrum

From the 12^th century on, managers have known that well-directed incentive schemes can influence worker behaviour. Consequently, we know the productivity of a worker is a variable based on how he or she responds to various incentives and motivators.

Similarly, the emergence of scientific management and other management theories in the 20^th century also highlighted the importance of organization and planning of work, and the workspace, in enhancing productivity. Improvements are always possible.

However, these concepts are largely ignored in project planning and control disciplines. Plans are set based on estimates made at the beginning of the project and rarely changed; at best, tools such as EV adjust future estimates based on performance to date.

What seems to be missing is a process that takes an objective look at productivity and identifies the changes needed to improve productivity to the levels needed to achieve project objectives. The concepts of process improvement and total quality management exist in general management and are mentioned in the A Guide to the Product Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK^® Guide), but no one seems to have moved these concepts into the domain of project planning and controls.

How do you think we could better approach the management of future work to enhance productivity and deliver better outcomes?