Why projects Fail?
Most of the managers are regularly complaining about high project failure rate. Everyone has different interpretations for failure of the project. A manager of a project will consider a project well done if it gets finished on time, within budget and according to the planned performance and meets the deadlines. A project is a fail endeavor if it fails to meet these parameters and fails to satisfy the stakeholders’ expectations. Project management is like serving tables and that mainly decides the success of a project.
“Ninety minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks, or for some eighty-plus hours.” — Andy Grove
Project manager should find that the project lives up to its initial promise and identify the reasons for its failure. Any of the following reasons can be the cause of project failure. So, put these things in place before you start working on a project.
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Why project fails?
Unrealistic deadlines
Setting unrealistic deadlines may certainly result in failure of a project as the deadlines are pretty hard to meet. A KPMG study found that 60% of failed projects have a deadline of less than a year as it forces the team members to rush through project phases. Chances of error increases with poorly set project deadlines that make use of poorly formed expectations. When the deadlines are unrealistic it leads to poor quality of performance, cost overruns and loss of respect for the project.
Solution
Before deciding on the final deadline of your project, consider all the factors that could play an important role in delaying of project like budget, time, resources available, customers, stakeholders, suppliers, subcontractors and everyone associated. This will prevent any hindrance in your project.
Lack of Interest from Stakeholders
Unclear scope and success criteria from the side of stakeholders leads to project failure. A project will be successful if its objective meets the objective of stakeholders who have vested interest in your project. If the stakeholders are not providing timely feedback it can drag your project down to drain because the flow of working on projects will be lost highly.
Solution
Identify all your project stakeholders, conduct frequent meetings with all of them, keep them informed about the success of the project, take feedback and try to bring in timely improvement. By doing this, no longer will the stakeholders be a victim of your project killer.
Lack of User Involvement
It is quite certain to come across a project that failed because it was not accepted by users. The project may fail because of end users not being involved in the project completely after the project has been been finished on time by the project team. This situation occurs mainly because of lack of communication with end users.
Solution
User involvement in your business can continuously lead to new development. Improve communications with stakeholders to ensure project success. Make user involvement to highest level to ensure successful implementation throughout project success.
Scope creep
The success of any project is also directly related to the future goals. Usually, the project managers fail to talk about the future of the project that their customers want to listen. Scope creep occurs from internal miscommunication and disagreements that creeps up on a project and destroys it. It unclear project scope makes it difficult for project managers to cope up with scope creep.
Solution
Try to know what the customer wants and ask the customer to break down exactly what they want and exactly what they don’t want. This will prevent you from scope creep and make your planning easy to prevent the rush towards the end of a project. Another way is to have a collaborative workshop where all the key players of a project come together to make sure they have a clear scope.
Decision making problems
A weak project plan can lead to project failure diving into the poor execution of work without planning. Issues with decision-making occur mainly because of failure in establishing clear process of decision making, unanswered queries, confusions, different queries, and lack of situational awareness.
Solution
Decision making is something that should be viewed as a team activity and a responsibility that should be well distributed among the team. Make sure all changes are made, be alert to scenarios that can derail the progress of your project. Discuss the important issues to make sure that your project is a success.
Project tracking and management
A project fails when the project manager fails to keep a track of the project due to poor management. Project tracking involves establishing checkpoints and milestones so that project doesn’t go over budget or time, team members are not burned out and there is an organized system for emails and spreadsheets.
Solution
Have a good tracking system to keep all your projects in place so that no tasks slip through the cracks unnoticed. Keep up with your team’s tasks by having a full fledged system to monitor the completion of a project and ensure its success.
Lack of buy-in and engagement
Another main reason why projects often fail is the lack of buy-in and engagement from the project team. When a project manager gives too much direction and tries to micromanage the things, it creates disengagement in teams. Failing to manage team members can lead to delays and result in cost overruns.
Solution
A project manager should look forward to bring the best practices of planning things to use that not only involves them but also involves the entire team. When the team will get involved in planning it will be able to better understand the project and decide the best approaches to carry out the project for its success. Ask them questions, meet them face to face and and understand what is going on for them.
Hiring wrong resources for the project
Does your resources have the right skill that you need for the success of your project? Keep in mind the skills you need during the hiring process. A wrong hire can cost a company a lot. Hiring the wrong team can add trouble to complex tasks and create a mess. The cost of solving the issues costs exponentially and will make the project out of control.
Solution
A company’s first step should be to hire the right in-house team that has the right skills and right talent to complete the project. Look outside your core team to find the best people for a project, contact consultants to fulfill specialized tasks when the time comes.
Poor planning sessions
A team usually fails despite of the best efforts put in due to ineffective planning. If something doesn’t start right there, it will not have a right end. As there is no solid plan to execute, it will become difficult to carry forward each phase of the project.
Solution
In order to plan the success of a project try putting teams together for a planning session. Discuss the vision and smart strategic planning to define the processes in a project. Project managers should be bold enough to make plans, set goals and communicate task assignments with their teams effectively.
Incompetent project manager and team
Usually, managers fail to perform competently with its team that leads to the failure of a project as they fail to achieve their objective. Due to lack of training and certification team members and managers miss the important skills and dive into failure.
Solution
Overcome the problem by hiring certified and experience project managers. Compromise on a few things for the best talent as they are going to help in the success of your project. Pick someone who is skilled and competent to work with its team
The aforementioned solutions to the common reasons for project failure will help you and your team to overcome the issues and reduce the risk of project failure. You need to spend more time working on the solutions to prevent the problems before it gets intense.
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