Project Management was focuses in the management of every project that we are going to make. But are we aware that in every project has “success” either it will “failure”? When we are met last meeting in our Project Management subject Sir Randy Gamboa gave an exciting activity that’s awaken the nerves of everybody because of one question.
Why do project fail? We are about to discuss the question in our one whole sheet of yellow paper and afterwards the sharing of ideas with the selected student. What I observed in their sharing they have almost the same reason why do project fail. They are stated the biggest factor why do project fails is the “time”. Somebody shares that he/she got the grade of 5.0 because he/she didn’t passed on time the project. Since project failure was a circumstance if a project given, which get through a human being, materials and financial resources, fails to deliver before the completion, no satisfactory product quality and even the beneficiaries can’t have their assistance. The project is considered “failed” when it does not produce results as proposed, exceeds its budget and time, and does not meet specifications. But there are many reasons why do we get fail in our projects especially taking the course of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology.
According to some reference it was conclude that a project fails when it does not meet the following criteria:
• It is delivered out of schedule (time constraint)
• It is delivered out of budget (cost constraint)
• It is delivered out of scope (scope constraint)
• The project product does not work as expected.
When I surfed and read some multiple websites and forums to examine project failure statistics and review project failure examples. I also looked through my own projects trying to ensure that if the projects did not meet any of the criteria they failed. My investigation has shown me that most projects, including my own projects, failed because one or several of the listed criteria were not met. So what are the project failure factors? What makes my project fail? Let’s list common causes of project failure.
Self- I can say that one of the considerable reason why do projects fail it is because by “ME” or by “YOU”. Just like in managing a particular project, then “YOU” who has the responsibility and the accountability to formulate and organize task should have to plan things not to fail. However, he is more certain that a project fail it is because person involved into it already has the plan to fail. I had read several site on why do project fail and the factors or reason result in break down. When projects begin to show signs of stress and failure, everyone looks to the project manager for answers. It may seem unfair that the burden of falls upon a single individual. But this is the reason why you chose to manage projects for a living! That’s why manager had been trained to recognize and deal with different types of situations. A project is considered a failure when it has not delivered what was required, in line with expectations. Therefore, in order to succeed, a project must deliver to cost, to quality, and on time; and it must deliver the benefits presented in the business case.
Plan- Large projects need to be planning even a small projects need it. Planning always be in the priority of making some projects. We all know that it is a method of doing something that is worked out in advance. The fundamental to a successful project is in the planning. So, creating a project plan is the first thing you should do when undertaking any kind of project. Often project planning is ignored in favor of getting on with the work. However, many people fail to realize the value of a project plan in saving time, money and many problems. Many factors will we guided before if the project have been plan well. In this factor you can experience on how can be a manager and or leader by both self and the group team members.
Time- Time is necessary step of all projects is estimating the time it will take. Not only does the client want to have an idea of how much money they will be spending, but they also need to plan around an estimated timeline. And you need to be able to ensure you have the time and resources necessary to complete the project. Depending on a number of factors, including how much experience you have with the type of work you’re doing, if you are using subcontractors, and the information you have from the client, estimating the time for a project can be difficult. Making a timeframe of a project can help also for the budgeting of the money you are planning to make.
Budget- How much the project cost? The company or the business has enough budget of the proposed project? How much have we spent on material resources versus labor resources? We can handle such cost data accurately on how to budget the project scope. Many easy ways out there that you can follow or get some ideas in budgeting the cost that proposed project.
The above factors are my own experience why does the project fail. But the following are the reason for the project failures which have been involved in our discussion last time.
• Poor estimates
• Scope changes -
• Work breakdown failures
• Not enough time/resources allocated
• Incompetent project manager
• Ineffective use of project management discipline and processes
• Lack of proper management support and
• Wrong use of technology
Those are the factors or justification for something your project why it was possible to be fail. Mr. Randy introduce those reason based of the sharing of our classmates and some are the experience of his self.
However project may as possibility fail it is because they were terminated with the reason of cost overruns, or reason why systems were launched with fundamental errors. Based on my understanding cost overruns is the dissemination quickly that becomes to overrun a place or site in large numbers and become threatening, harmful and unpleasant that big cost of amounts require which is not expected.
The different between success and failure is success of a project should be are clear and absolute – right? Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Things are not simple to obtain. Because the second part of definition of success is that the project must be delivered "in line with expectations." It is essential that most of the cases a project is fail when the client for instance, speak out because of the result of an expected project. If a stakeholder agreed to the new contract that a project had to exceed its initial budget, the project may still be considered a success. It might be happen when it is not been clearly budgeted during the planning stage. On the other hand, if a project delivered everything that was in the detailed project designs, it may still be considered a failure if it didn't include vital elements that the key stakeholders needed. So a certain project like constructing high ways must finish and end its requirements like the distance and cost, which consist of permit and fees on the workers. This doesn't seem fair, but project success and failure isn't just about the facts, nor is it simply about what was delivered. It's also, critical; about how the project is been observe. The management is very significant to have an expected result as the client wants.
I had visited one site that stated a six reasons why almost of the Information Technology student come up with a failure grades because of their project didn’t match with their proposed plan and some cases did not passed on time. In summary of it these are the following statement: Absence of some Users, Time Frame Scales, Materials Possessions or No Requirements, Scope Creep, No Change Control System and Poor Testing. So this are the few explanations of those reason based of my understanding first the absence of user participation is one of the difficulties of a project that is being fail because it may proved fatal or deadly for project. Without user involvement nobody in the business feels committed to a system, and can even be antagonist 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, and when the people in a business are already stretched, finding time for a new project is not high on their priorities. Therefore senior management need to continuously support the project to make it clear to staff it is a priority.
Unpredicted time frame usually happens when setting the time bounded from the start. Long time for a project has led to systems being delivered for products and services no longer in use by an organization. If the person behind the project set the estimated time for doing a project it should be follow in accordingly. If the stakeholders demand for new requirements the time is expected to extend. The key recommendation is that project timescales should be short, which means that larger systems should be split into separate projects. There are always problems with this approach, but the benefits of doing so are considerable. Managers on a project should be aware for fast delivery and some indication prior to the problem on time or unrealistic timescales. The recommendation to this reason of failure is to review and look over all the project plans if it is realistic.
Most of the project has unclear requirements due to lack of stakeholders’ involvement. That’s how important on what kind of technology is going to use for the project. This has led to cases where the developers, having no input from the users, build what they believe is needed, without having any real knowledge of the business. Inevitably when the system is delivered business users say it does not do what they need it to. This is closely linked to lack of user involvement, but goes beyond it. Users must know what it is they want, and be able to specify it precisely. As non-IT specialists this means normally they need skills training. In fact developers must have the right and proficiency of expertise to be competitive.
As I’ve learned about scope creep it is the uncontrolled of the system. Scope is the overall view of what a system will deliver. Scope creep is the insidious or the gradual harmful growth in the scale of a system during the life of a project. As an example for a system which will hold customer records, it is then decided it will also deal with customer bills, then these bills will be provided on the Internet, and so on and so forth. In this scenario it is harmful to have the access on the project. All the functionality will have to be delivered at one time, therefore affecting time scales, and all will have to have detailed requirements. This is a management issue closely related to change control. Management must be realistic about what is it they want and when, and stick to it.
It is a reason for project to fail when there is lack of control or difficulty. It may happen at a faster rate. Therefore, it is practical and reasonable to have changed while a project is being built. However uncontrolled changes might be damage with a system under development and have caused many project failures. This possible happen when this reason is the advantages of shorter time frame approach to building system.
During the development of a project, the developers will do the testing before the delivery happen. But eventually users are needed to run a system checking the requirements. However acceptance testing often fails to catch many faults before a system goes live because requirements are poor when tested, unplanned test system, inadequate trained users who doesn’t aware of the purpose of testing and adequate time to perform test of project. Users should allow themselves on learning and utilizing experience of the business, they should do the acceptance.
About the ultimate causes of failure of some IT projects have given by most of the stakeholders, consultants and project managers. They made their own conclusion by their area of expertise. Even with comprehensive experience they have but been exposed to a small sample of project failures as compared to the [sky high] number of projects that fail. Even very experienced project managers are confronted with unmet situations. There are no two identical combinations of IT project scope, objective and environment.
These are some example of project fail in IT projects.
The KPMG Canada Survey (1997)
This study, conducted by KPMG Canada, has been mentioned in the statistics over IT project failure rate.
Key Findings
The main causes of project failure that were identified were:
1. Poor project planning. Specifically, inadequate risk management and a weak project plan. Risk management becomes more important as the organization gets bigger, so larger organizations need to pay more attention to this area.
2. Weak business case. The need for the system should be justified in ways that relate directly to the organization's business needs.
3. Lack of top management involvement and support. This often dooms the project to failure before it starts. Securing buy-in from the top, often by a strong business case backed up with a realistic project plan, is an essential step.
Additional Findings
• Projects fail more often because of schedule overruns than budget overruns.
• Many projects fail because they use new or unproven technology.
• Poor estimates or weak definitions of requirements at the project planning stage also contribute to project failure.
• Projects can run into trouble due to the vendors’ inability to meet commitments.
• 60% of the failed projects were planned to take less than one year to complete.
The Chaos Report (1995)
The scope and approach of this landmark survey has been presented in our overview over the rate of IT project failure. It has been conducted among 365 IT managers from companies of various sizes and in various economic sectors.
Project Evaluation Criteria
The main IT project failure criteria considered were:
• Cost Overruns
• Time Overruns
• Content Deficiencies
How to avoid a failure of one project?
We always heard about projects failure -Scope Changes running out of control, Budget Overruns, Lack of System Adoption, Automation Failures, and Live Events with fundamental system errors. But how can we avoid project failure in coming projects even present projects today. According to my source a project to be successful, you need to manage to the outcomes and business benefits desired and assure the delivered solution is adopted and utilized by the stakeholders. It is not enough to be on time and on budget. Make sure you manage the change transformation along with the project execution. Success is deemed from the eyes of the stakeholder, so add in the tasks and steps to manage their expectations, market the solution, reinforce their support, and address their concerns.
For me to have a successful result for the projects, we don’t only stick on managing our project expertly and produce our best product to have customers. To keep away from failure, we need to make sure that we have recognized, categorized and classified the right project requirements, created an achievable project case, put strong project governance into place, managed a high-quality implementation, focused on benefits, and monitored your changing environment. So, not only those elements, the one of the element that we can avoid some instances about project failure are our self. Self is the biggest factors among those elements because if can’t manage our self like the time, budget and etc. the other elements are useless. Managing our self and give some effort to have characterize our own life. In addition if you have a high quality or standard characteristics and you have gain the trust and loyalty of the stakeholder then the stakeholders can be supportive with your all projects if you are working with them. However there are no other people can declare that your project is successful than yourself. Or otherwise you have your boss and stakeholders can declare your project was a successful one. Be happy always in the work you are in so that you can make sustain the criticism of others especially your client. When you are happy of what you are doing you can make the best of it. Know the importance of your work. Discipline on the proponents is needed in order for them to achieve their main objectives and ultimate goals. The proper use of project management could give them the opportunity of success. Planning each phases of the project and identifying the scope is some of the basic keys to start the project properly. A project also fails because of lack of self-discipline! Working disciplines. A competitive project must have a self-disciplined character. A good project s starts from a good project maker. A maker must be attentive and responsive to his project for him to reach the goal of success. A good project maker must also act the proper working disciplines. Like a boy scout the discipline was always implement because if you are in the jungle and you are group by a team then you must know your members and show some discipline towards the activity so that you can achieve something that you can never expected. It is a self mastery element in the model they called it SEED. Good manager and good leader must show object of enthusiasm and concern to his or her project.
"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that?s where you will find success." - Thomas J. Watson
References:
http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/6840_f03_papers/frese/
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2007/07/eight-reasons-for-failed-itbas-1.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/five-tips-to-learn-from-failure/11187?tag=mantle_skin;content
http://www.mymanagementguide.com/top-5-project-failure-reasons-or-why-my-project-fails/
http://www.it-cortex.com/Stat_Failure_Cause.htm
Why do project fail? We are about to discuss the question in our one whole sheet of yellow paper and afterwards the sharing of ideas with the selected student. What I observed in their sharing they have almost the same reason why do project fail. They are stated the biggest factor why do project fails is the “time”. Somebody shares that he/she got the grade of 5.0 because he/she didn’t passed on time the project. Since project failure was a circumstance if a project given, which get through a human being, materials and financial resources, fails to deliver before the completion, no satisfactory product quality and even the beneficiaries can’t have their assistance. The project is considered “failed” when it does not produce results as proposed, exceeds its budget and time, and does not meet specifications. But there are many reasons why do we get fail in our projects especially taking the course of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology.
According to some reference it was conclude that a project fails when it does not meet the following criteria:
• It is delivered out of schedule (time constraint)
• It is delivered out of budget (cost constraint)
• It is delivered out of scope (scope constraint)
• The project product does not work as expected.
When I surfed and read some multiple websites and forums to examine project failure statistics and review project failure examples. I also looked through my own projects trying to ensure that if the projects did not meet any of the criteria they failed. My investigation has shown me that most projects, including my own projects, failed because one or several of the listed criteria were not met. So what are the project failure factors? What makes my project fail? Let’s list common causes of project failure.
Self- I can say that one of the considerable reason why do projects fail it is because by “ME” or by “YOU”. Just like in managing a particular project, then “YOU” who has the responsibility and the accountability to formulate and organize task should have to plan things not to fail. However, he is more certain that a project fail it is because person involved into it already has the plan to fail. I had read several site on why do project fail and the factors or reason result in break down. When projects begin to show signs of stress and failure, everyone looks to the project manager for answers. It may seem unfair that the burden of falls upon a single individual. But this is the reason why you chose to manage projects for a living! That’s why manager had been trained to recognize and deal with different types of situations. A project is considered a failure when it has not delivered what was required, in line with expectations. Therefore, in order to succeed, a project must deliver to cost, to quality, and on time; and it must deliver the benefits presented in the business case.
Plan- Large projects need to be planning even a small projects need it. Planning always be in the priority of making some projects. We all know that it is a method of doing something that is worked out in advance. The fundamental to a successful project is in the planning. So, creating a project plan is the first thing you should do when undertaking any kind of project. Often project planning is ignored in favor of getting on with the work. However, many people fail to realize the value of a project plan in saving time, money and many problems. Many factors will we guided before if the project have been plan well. In this factor you can experience on how can be a manager and or leader by both self and the group team members.
Time- Time is necessary step of all projects is estimating the time it will take. Not only does the client want to have an idea of how much money they will be spending, but they also need to plan around an estimated timeline. And you need to be able to ensure you have the time and resources necessary to complete the project. Depending on a number of factors, including how much experience you have with the type of work you’re doing, if you are using subcontractors, and the information you have from the client, estimating the time for a project can be difficult. Making a timeframe of a project can help also for the budgeting of the money you are planning to make.
Budget- How much the project cost? The company or the business has enough budget of the proposed project? How much have we spent on material resources versus labor resources? We can handle such cost data accurately on how to budget the project scope. Many easy ways out there that you can follow or get some ideas in budgeting the cost that proposed project.
The above factors are my own experience why does the project fail. But the following are the reason for the project failures which have been involved in our discussion last time.
• Poor estimates
• Scope changes -
• Work breakdown failures
• Not enough time/resources allocated
• Incompetent project manager
• Ineffective use of project management discipline and processes
• Lack of proper management support and
• Wrong use of technology
Those are the factors or justification for something your project why it was possible to be fail. Mr. Randy introduce those reason based of the sharing of our classmates and some are the experience of his self.
However project may as possibility fail it is because they were terminated with the reason of cost overruns, or reason why systems were launched with fundamental errors. Based on my understanding cost overruns is the dissemination quickly that becomes to overrun a place or site in large numbers and become threatening, harmful and unpleasant that big cost of amounts require which is not expected.
The different between success and failure is success of a project should be are clear and absolute – right? Unfortunately, it's not that simple. Things are not simple to obtain. Because the second part of definition of success is that the project must be delivered "in line with expectations." It is essential that most of the cases a project is fail when the client for instance, speak out because of the result of an expected project. If a stakeholder agreed to the new contract that a project had to exceed its initial budget, the project may still be considered a success. It might be happen when it is not been clearly budgeted during the planning stage. On the other hand, if a project delivered everything that was in the detailed project designs, it may still be considered a failure if it didn't include vital elements that the key stakeholders needed. So a certain project like constructing high ways must finish and end its requirements like the distance and cost, which consist of permit and fees on the workers. This doesn't seem fair, but project success and failure isn't just about the facts, nor is it simply about what was delivered. It's also, critical; about how the project is been observe. The management is very significant to have an expected result as the client wants.
I had visited one site that stated a six reasons why almost of the Information Technology student come up with a failure grades because of their project didn’t match with their proposed plan and some cases did not passed on time. In summary of it these are the following statement: Absence of some Users, Time Frame Scales, Materials Possessions or No Requirements, Scope Creep, No Change Control System and Poor Testing. So this are the few explanations of those reason based of my understanding first the absence of user participation is one of the difficulties of a project that is being fail because it may proved fatal or deadly for project. Without user involvement nobody in the business feels committed to a system, and can even be antagonist 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, and when the people in a business are already stretched, finding time for a new project is not high on their priorities. Therefore senior management need to continuously support the project to make it clear to staff it is a priority.
Unpredicted time frame usually happens when setting the time bounded from the start. Long time for a project has led to systems being delivered for products and services no longer in use by an organization. If the person behind the project set the estimated time for doing a project it should be follow in accordingly. If the stakeholders demand for new requirements the time is expected to extend. The key recommendation is that project timescales should be short, which means that larger systems should be split into separate projects. There are always problems with this approach, but the benefits of doing so are considerable. Managers on a project should be aware for fast delivery and some indication prior to the problem on time or unrealistic timescales. The recommendation to this reason of failure is to review and look over all the project plans if it is realistic.
Most of the project has unclear requirements due to lack of stakeholders’ involvement. That’s how important on what kind of technology is going to use for the project. This has led to cases where the developers, having no input from the users, build what they believe is needed, without having any real knowledge of the business. Inevitably when the system is delivered business users say it does not do what they need it to. This is closely linked to lack of user involvement, but goes beyond it. Users must know what it is they want, and be able to specify it precisely. As non-IT specialists this means normally they need skills training. In fact developers must have the right and proficiency of expertise to be competitive.
As I’ve learned about scope creep it is the uncontrolled of the system. Scope is the overall view of what a system will deliver. Scope creep is the insidious or the gradual harmful growth in the scale of a system during the life of a project. As an example for a system which will hold customer records, it is then decided it will also deal with customer bills, then these bills will be provided on the Internet, and so on and so forth. In this scenario it is harmful to have the access on the project. All the functionality will have to be delivered at one time, therefore affecting time scales, and all will have to have detailed requirements. This is a management issue closely related to change control. Management must be realistic about what is it they want and when, and stick to it.
It is a reason for project to fail when there is lack of control or difficulty. It may happen at a faster rate. Therefore, it is practical and reasonable to have changed while a project is being built. However uncontrolled changes might be damage with a system under development and have caused many project failures. This possible happen when this reason is the advantages of shorter time frame approach to building system.
During the development of a project, the developers will do the testing before the delivery happen. But eventually users are needed to run a system checking the requirements. However acceptance testing often fails to catch many faults before a system goes live because requirements are poor when tested, unplanned test system, inadequate trained users who doesn’t aware of the purpose of testing and adequate time to perform test of project. Users should allow themselves on learning and utilizing experience of the business, they should do the acceptance.
About the ultimate causes of failure of some IT projects have given by most of the stakeholders, consultants and project managers. They made their own conclusion by their area of expertise. Even with comprehensive experience they have but been exposed to a small sample of project failures as compared to the [sky high] number of projects that fail. Even very experienced project managers are confronted with unmet situations. There are no two identical combinations of IT project scope, objective and environment.
These are some example of project fail in IT projects.
The KPMG Canada Survey (1997)
This study, conducted by KPMG Canada, has been mentioned in the statistics over IT project failure rate.
Key Findings
The main causes of project failure that were identified were:
1. Poor project planning. Specifically, inadequate risk management and a weak project plan. Risk management becomes more important as the organization gets bigger, so larger organizations need to pay more attention to this area.
2. Weak business case. The need for the system should be justified in ways that relate directly to the organization's business needs.
3. Lack of top management involvement and support. This often dooms the project to failure before it starts. Securing buy-in from the top, often by a strong business case backed up with a realistic project plan, is an essential step.
Additional Findings
• Projects fail more often because of schedule overruns than budget overruns.
• Many projects fail because they use new or unproven technology.
• Poor estimates or weak definitions of requirements at the project planning stage also contribute to project failure.
• Projects can run into trouble due to the vendors’ inability to meet commitments.
• 60% of the failed projects were planned to take less than one year to complete.
The Chaos Report (1995)
The scope and approach of this landmark survey has been presented in our overview over the rate of IT project failure. It has been conducted among 365 IT managers from companies of various sizes and in various economic sectors.
Project Evaluation Criteria
The main IT project failure criteria considered were:
• Cost Overruns
• Time Overruns
• Content Deficiencies
How to avoid a failure of one project?
We always heard about projects failure -Scope Changes running out of control, Budget Overruns, Lack of System Adoption, Automation Failures, and Live Events with fundamental system errors. But how can we avoid project failure in coming projects even present projects today. According to my source a project to be successful, you need to manage to the outcomes and business benefits desired and assure the delivered solution is adopted and utilized by the stakeholders. It is not enough to be on time and on budget. Make sure you manage the change transformation along with the project execution. Success is deemed from the eyes of the stakeholder, so add in the tasks and steps to manage their expectations, market the solution, reinforce their support, and address their concerns.
For me to have a successful result for the projects, we don’t only stick on managing our project expertly and produce our best product to have customers. To keep away from failure, we need to make sure that we have recognized, categorized and classified the right project requirements, created an achievable project case, put strong project governance into place, managed a high-quality implementation, focused on benefits, and monitored your changing environment. So, not only those elements, the one of the element that we can avoid some instances about project failure are our self. Self is the biggest factors among those elements because if can’t manage our self like the time, budget and etc. the other elements are useless. Managing our self and give some effort to have characterize our own life. In addition if you have a high quality or standard characteristics and you have gain the trust and loyalty of the stakeholder then the stakeholders can be supportive with your all projects if you are working with them. However there are no other people can declare that your project is successful than yourself. Or otherwise you have your boss and stakeholders can declare your project was a successful one. Be happy always in the work you are in so that you can make sustain the criticism of others especially your client. When you are happy of what you are doing you can make the best of it. Know the importance of your work. Discipline on the proponents is needed in order for them to achieve their main objectives and ultimate goals. The proper use of project management could give them the opportunity of success. Planning each phases of the project and identifying the scope is some of the basic keys to start the project properly. A project also fails because of lack of self-discipline! Working disciplines. A competitive project must have a self-disciplined character. A good project s starts from a good project maker. A maker must be attentive and responsive to his project for him to reach the goal of success. A good project maker must also act the proper working disciplines. Like a boy scout the discipline was always implement because if you are in the jungle and you are group by a team then you must know your members and show some discipline towards the activity so that you can achieve something that you can never expected. It is a self mastery element in the model they called it SEED. Good manager and good leader must show object of enthusiasm and concern to his or her project.
"Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that?s where you will find success." - Thomas J. Watson
References:
http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/6840_f03_papers/frese/
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/public-sector/2007/07/eight-reasons-for-failed-itbas-1.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/five-tips-to-learn-from-failure/11187?tag=mantle_skin;content
http://www.mymanagementguide.com/top-5-project-failure-reasons-or-why-my-project-fails/
http://www.it-cortex.com/Stat_Failure_Cause.htm
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