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WHY PROJECTS FAIL

A Presentation by Jemiyo, Ayodeji Project Engineer

Project DepartmentEngineering Division

Feb 2008

KNOWLEDGE SHARING EVENT@

NNPC TOWERSENGINEERING DIVISION

BLOCK B

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1.0 INTRODUCTION"It must be remembered that project management is first and foremost a philosophy of management, not an elaborate set of tools and techniques. It will only be as effective as the people who use it."

- Bryce's LawSeveral trillions of naira have been pumped into handling and managing projects “the professional way”

in order to avoid Project Management failure. Yet, at the end of the day, there is not much to report by way of success. Surveys after surveys have beamed gloomy pictures about the way projects end up –

FAILURE.

1.1 WHAT IS A PROJECT?It is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product or service

1.2 WHAT IS PROJECT MANGEMENT?The application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements

A whole discipline known as "Project Management"

has evolved in the past fifty years.

1.3 PROJECT MANAGEMENT A SOFTWARE TOOL?Most people think of Project Management as task management (a laMicrosoft Project). Project management is about skills and discipline. It's about applying proactive processes and best practices.

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1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.4 HOW MUCH PROJECT MANAGEMENT IS NECESSARY?Can the philosophies of project management be adopted and implemented by a single group of people for a single project? Yes. A department or division? Certainly. The entire company? Definitely. In fact, as the scope grows, communications improves and the philosophy is more consistently applied.

The scope of project management affects many people:The individual worker will prepare estimates and schedules, perform project work, and report on activities.The project manager will plan and direct the use of resources on projects, and solve problems.Department managers will administer resources and control projects within an area.Executive management will establish project priorities and monitor project progress.

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1.0 INTRODUCTION1.5 WHY PROJECTS FAIL?Projects fail when they do not meet the following criteria for success:

It is delivered on time.It is on or under budget.The product of the project works as required.

Only a few projects achieve all three. So what are the key factors for success?

Organisations and individuals have studied a number of projects that have both succeeded and failed and some common factors emerge. A key finding is that there is no one overriding factor that causes project failure. A number of factors are involved in any particular project failure, some of which interact with each other. Here are some of the most important reasons for failure.

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2.0 LACK OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN ORGANIZATION

2.1 LACK OF KNOWLEDGE –Employees simply lack the basic knowledge of the mechanics of Project Management. Hiring or contracting people with absolutely no knowledge of basic Project Management concepts should becoming a rarity, especially, if the organization is project-based.

2.2 LACK OF ORGANIZATIONAL POLICY –The organization has not adopted a formal policy for managing projects. Consequently, informal and inconsistent approaches to project management are used with mixed results.

2.3 LACK OF ENFORCEMENT OF POLICY AND PROCEDURES –Even though a policy has been established, it is not enforced. As a result, inconsistent results emerge.

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2.0 LACK OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN ORGANIZATION

2.4 ORGANISATION IS NOT COMMITTED TO PROJECT MANAGEMENTMost organisations say they want good project management, but do the actions back up the words?

2.5 LACK OF CONSIDERATION FOR THE MAGNITUDE AND COMPLEXITIES OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND ATTACK IT IN PIECE MEAL –

People seem to naturally underestimate the magnitude of project management.

For example, project planning involves defining work breakdown structures anddependencies ;which is a precursor to estimating, planning, reporting and control; estimating is a prerequisite to scheduling; time reporting impacts project estimates and schedules; resource allocation is based on availability of qualified people (skills inventory) and current project schedules; etc.

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3.0 LACK OF PROPER STAKEHOLDERS MANAGEMENT

3.1 LACK OF STAKEHOLDER BUY-IN (LACK OF USER INVOLVEMENT)Lack of user involvement has proved fatal for many projects. Without user involvement nobody in the business feels committed to a system, and can even be hostile to it. If a project is to be a success senior management and users need to be involved from the start, and continuously throughout the development. This requires time and effort.

There are two types of stakeholder buy-in. Firstly commitment from a top-level executive authorized to make decisions and spend money. Secondly, you need support from all project participants. Sometimes, project managers make the mistake of pandering to the needs of their employer at the expense of relationships with other stakeholders, or the ‘little people’ and this can have a negative impact on teamwork and cooperation.

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3.0 LACK OF PROPER STAKEHOLDERS MANAGEMENT

3.2. HIDDEN AGENDAS CAN COMPROMISE PROGRESS This is a particularly difficult problem to identify and overcome. We all have unexpressed thoughts and concerns. We all have egos and pride to protect. Good project management also involves actively encouraging open dialogue with all stakeholders in the project, including arranging one-on-one meetings with those individuals who are uncomfortable voicing their opinions publicly.

3.3. UNMANAGED EXPECTATIONS Every stakeholder in a project will have their own expectations. If not managed carefully, this can lead to chaos, confusion and frustration all round. It pays to establish as much clarity up-front as you can by clearly defining the project parameters such as aims, inputs, outcomes, influence, boundaries, roles and responsibilities. Every time a change occurs, it needs to be evaluated against these parameters. A change could be as simple as a stakeholder changing their mind about something. Role confusion is a classic problem. Rather than assuming everyone has the same expectations of their roles and the roles of others, spell it out. Kick the project off by getting everyone to set down their expectations and priorities on paper.

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3.0 LACK OF PROPER STAKEHOLDERS MANAGEMENT

3.4. STAKEHOLDER CONFLICTSStakeholder conflicts can play many different roles project failures. Often, stakeholders have personal reasons for not being able to work together. Other projects fail because the project managers do not know who the "real" stakeholders are.Other projects, especially smaller projects within larger projects, never go anywhere because the internal stakeholders never agree on priorities.

3.5. INEFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION There is a direct relationship between the size of a project team and the difficulty in keeping all members of that team up to date on changes, progress, tools, and issues. Such problems are common on large projects, especially if people are working at different sites.In many troubled projects there isn't one person who has an overview of the whole project. Each project member needs to know how his or her one piece fits into the entire project.

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3.0 LACK OF PROPER STAKEHOLDERS MANAGEMENT

3.5.1 E-MAILEmail is probably the most prevalent form of project communication. A great strategy is to discuss only one subject per email and to use a succinct subject line.

3.5.2 DOCUMENTATION CONTROLGood documentation is also important, but it must be accessible and relevant. Needlessly complex documentation or the production of documentation for its own sake just gets in the way.

3.5.3 EFFECTIVE LISTENINGIn the throes of telling people what they need to do, it is easy to forgo the respect you can afford someone by genuinely listening to them. All too often, we listen so as to compose our response. The ability to just listen is a rare skill.

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4.0 NOT INVOLVING THE PROJECT MANAGER FROM THE START OF THE PROJECT

If the project manager isn’t involved from the start they miss out on crucial and often, unwritten, communication. The project manager doesn’t have a firm idea of who are the players involved; the real power sources and agendas. The problem is that there is a lot of water under the bridge between that first meeting and project kick-off.

5.0 LONG OR UNREALISTIC TIME SCALESThe key recommendation is that project timescales should be short, which means that larger projects should be split into separate projects. There are always problems with this approach, but the benefits of doing so are considerable.

6.0 SCOPE CREEPScope is the overall view of what a project will deliver. Scope creep is the insidious growth in the scale of work during the life of a project.

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7.0 NO CHANGE CONTROL SYSTEM

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Despite everything business change, and change is happening at a

faster rate then ever before. So it is not realistic to expect no change in requirements while a project is going on. However uncontrolled changes play havoc with a system under development and have caused many project failures.

Nonetheless change must be managed like any other factor of business. The business must evaluate the effects of any changed requirements on the timescale, cost and risk of project. Change Management and its sister discipline of Configuration Management are skills that can be taught.

8.0 POOR TESTING (QUALITY AUDIT)□

Quality assurance and quality control needs to be performed on project, most projects lack proper documented quality policy and procedures. The engineers will do a great deal of testing during development, but eventually the users must run acceptance tests to see if the system meets the business requirements.

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9. POOR COST AND SCHEDULE ESTIMATION

It is unfair to call a project a failure if it fails to meet budget and schedule goals that were inherently unattainable. Every project has a minimum achievable schedule and cost. Fredrick Brooks summarized this law in The Mythical Man Month when he stated, "The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned." Attempts to circumvent a project's natural minimum limits will backfire

10. HALO THEORYThis one is obvious, but often overlooked. You must have the right people to do the right job. There’s no getting around it. Halo theory is the process (in project management) of assuming that someone would make a good project manager because that person is good in his or her technical field. This theory often becomes reality when someone is promoted to a Project Manager from a technical or hands on position and hasn’t had the opportunity to receive any Project Management training.However, the best technologists are not necessarily always poised to be the best managers. The skill set for management and technicality are disjoint. The larger the project, the more need there is for people with excellent planning, oversight, organization, and communications skills; all excellent engineers do not necessarily have these abilities.The solution to skill-driven challenges is easy to define but difficult and expensive to accomplish: Attract and retain the most highly skilled and productive people. You get what you pay for.

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11. LATE FAILURE WARNING SIGNAL

Typically, in this part of the world we do not do proper risk management-identification of risk, documenting them in risk register, quantitative and qualitative analysis, a good risk response system, management reserves, inserting risk triggers and risk owners. That is why warning signals are too late to respond. Does the following scenario sound familiar?

GOLD PLATINGIn project management, adding extra functionality to scope is known as gold plating. You should give the customer what they asked for; no more, no less. Giving any extra is a waste of time and adds no benefit to the project, especially since only 34% of projects are successful.How many times have you heard complain about the dreaded “feature creep”. “The customers have changed their minds again”. “They want to add more functionality!”

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MAKE TEAM MEMBERS WORK LONG HOURS

This is one the favorite ways to send a project into oblivion. Don’t get me wrong; there are times in the project lifecycle where a few long hours can be expected. The final dash to the finish line, the panic session to fix the repairs/reworks. Sometimes it does make sense to work long hours. The law of diminishing returns come into play as rework is increased: resolving defects and redevelopment of functional missteps consume the teams time. The solution is Work smarter not harder and go home, that is by having a good quality policy, quality assurance and control.

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CONCLUSION

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This presentation should serve as a reality check for your project. □

These factors are not the only ones that affect the success or failure of a project, but they appear near, or at the top of the list of project failures. They are all interlinked, but as can be seen they are not technical issues, but management and training ones.

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If you violate any of the principles noted in this presentation,

you should not expect to succeed

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By following these project management tips you will enhance your

project’s chance of success.