Frank WintersPhotographer and ConservationistSandwich, Ma, United States
In your experience, what are the primary causes of project failure? I have my personal top ten list, what's yours? In particular, what can be done to improve the abysmal success rate of IT projects? If we solve this conundrum, let's move on to world peace! Saving Changes...
Perhaps it isn't that projects fail, they simply don’t produce the results that some of the participant (naively) expected. Such projects are, in fact, successes because the participants are disabused of their naive or inappropriate expectations. Unfortunately many can’t make sense of this experience (i.e. they "have the experience but don’t get the learning") and so continue with their unreasonable expectations about the nature of projects. Saving Changes...
I think it is a matter of perception most of the time. Look at it like this; let's replace project with "Op" (operation, I'm ex-military try and follow along) Now to the perception of the team tasked with the op lets say 3rd Group Special Forces, they are to go to a foriegn location and find what weapons are there. They go and find what useed to be some kind of ammo dump, they all come home alive, mision accomplished right? To them, and to thier "PM" they did what they were asked, to the best of thier ability. To the Pentagon however, they failed to find weapons of Mass destruction. The "op" was a failure. If I ask you to implement a wireless network, and you do..only to have my boss say I still see wires (because the devices still need to be plugged into the power outlets duh! true story) in his eyes it failed. now as we all know things are usually a lot gryer and foggy-er (if that is a word) than this. Add in things. the "Op" was to rescue a foriegn diplomat, and we did, except three of our CISSP engineers drown during insertion, was this project a failure or a success? many see a project as the whole solution rather than as an event. We are all familar with Gant Charts, each project has multiple events milestones etc. Some of these do not go off as planned, but the project still succeeds! Now try this, put ALL of your projects on a Gant chart, how many have to succeed in order for the year to be successful?? 50%, 80%? If your shooting for VPP status forget it! you can only afford .0000001 mistakes total,(I have a VPP pin! I also 3 article 15's, those are like court martials >:^) ) how about this you are a medic, you recieve 50 wounded a day, what percentage of survivors do you need to be successful? well let's start with 1. let's try another angle, is Sony electronice successful? The Mini-disc failed? The PSP did not, but could have been even better if they stuck to the original plan. Should Sony drop its consumer electronics division? They have had some big failures. AIBO, one of thier robots, a dog, is hugely successful, and has been canceled, why? he's to expensive? Did the AIBO fail, or is he just a step in a bigger picture? maybe he is just the casualty of a smaller failure somewhere else, Like when they give the order for men to jump out of a plane based on wind conditions. The guy in the plan heard "one to four knots" which is good because they can jump as long as its under 16 knots right!? but the Pathfiner was actually saying "one-two-four knots" thats 142! ouch, hundreds of paratroopers jumped, many off course and injured. was this project a success or a failure? well if the project was trainging at Ft. Bragg, it was a failure, if it was invading France and liberating Europe from the Nazis, then maybe it was just a milestone on a much larger Gant chart. Saving Changes...
Cindy EtohDirector of Project Services| Ropes and GrayBaldwin, Ny, United States
I am writing a doctoral dissertation on reasons why IT projects fail and early warnings of troubled IT projects. I will post my key findings upon completion. Saving Changes...
Integrity is the absolute most important thing of all. If people lie or mislead, it is too hard to know when they are telling the truth. It's like the boy who cried wolf. Saving Changes...
Information is not knowledge,
Knowledge is not wisdom,
Wisdom is not truth,
Truth is not beauty,
Beauty is not love,
Love is not music
and Music is THE BEST
