Organisations need to foster a culture that allows projects to succeed
Over the last week or so on LinkedIn the same image has popped up time and time again. It’s clearly good clickbait as people have pasted and reposted it numerous times.
Why Do Most Projects Fail
There are so many things wrong with this that it’s a job to know where to start. First of all there is no provenance. Who was surveyed, how was the survey conducted, what was the sample size and demographic of respondents? On what basis is the assertion made that “Most” projects fail. Let’s be clear - more than 50% of projects fail, apparently. That’s a pretty stark claim, although of course, there is no indication in this diagram of what success or failure actually means or how you quantify it. All these problems aside, one thing is true. These posts resonate with people and they are rapidly attaining the status of ‘conventional wisdom’. There must be a reason they are posted and reposted with lots of ‘likes’.
I would like to just pick up on two issues here: Firstly, many LinkedIn readers may be seeing something like this for the first time but this is nothing new. I have been following ‘research’ like this for decades. The first example I saw was at a conference that referred back to research done in 1972, which revealed that the reasons why projects fail are:
- Unrealistic expectations
- Unclear or inadequate requirements
- Lack of senior management support
- Insufficient or excessive planning
- Lack of resources
- Ill-considered changes
- Lack of end user input
- Insufficient or excessive control
- Poor delegation or supervision
- Poor or non-existent project closure.
It’s like a game of ‘spot the difference’. Nothing has really changed in 50 years.
The frightening observation here is that when you look down these lists, there is nothing that isn’t covered on the first day of the most basic of project management courses. The need for realistic expectations; the need for end-user input to develop good requirements; the need for stakeholder engagement and the need to close the project effectively.
The question is “Why, after decades of investment in project management skills has nothing changed?”
Secondly, it’s important to recognise that these are not the causes of project failure, they are symptoms. These are the things you notice when there are underlying problems that prevent projects from succeeding.
Ultimately, organisations need to foster a culture that allows projects to succeed. An understanding of what it means to own and run projects needs to be widespread across an organisation, not just among those who are directly involved in projects. Those who are directly involved need to be given the chance to apply good practice. Too many investments in project management development programmes do not allow people to apply the good practice they learn on courses.
These are among the root causes of failure that manifest themselves in the symptoms that appear in dubious clickbait surveys. Until we start addressing these root causes, nothing will change.
