How to Avoid Project Failure

Having the ability to deliver projects on time and in budget is the pinnacle and project manager or organization can dream for when it comes to running a project.

Unfortunately, more than we like to admit, this is not the case. Whilst most project won’t “fail” they will run into problems that could lead to deadlines being extended or extra funds needing to be allocated. In fact, an industry survey shows that only 5-20% of all IT projects finish on-time or in budget.

Projects running into problems and running behind schedule or over budget is not always a bad thing. Companies have learned to embrace these mistakes in one project and apply the newly found knowledge to their future endeavours, and as we build up more knowledge and experience on how projects run within our businesses the less mistakes we should be making.

There are a few points however everyone can consider before embarking on a project, understanding these 5 simple tips can help drastically reduce the chances of projects failing.

Set Realistic Expectations

If you sat down and asked most people what would make the perfect car, you can be certain a common answer would be one that doesn’t need fuel to run so you don’t have to spend money filling it up, on paper this sounds great, but the reality is, this is unrealistic. It’s an extreme example but these unrealistic expectations of products happen all the time in planning for a project.

We need to fully understand what we can and can’t achieve, if we have “yes men” telling the customer they can have everything they want, in the timeframe they want it and for their ideal price you have instantly set that project up to fail.

We need to have large amounts of respect between suppliers, stakeholders and the experts to all be able to fully understand what we can do with he resources we have and be able to settle on a final product or goal that everyone involved agrees can be achieved.

Don’t rush your planning

It can be easy as a company or stakeholders once you have an idea to want to rush it through, a mix of excitement and impatience can lead to anting to start a project early without learning the full scope of the project and its risks. This is guaranteed to lead to issues throughout the project with rework needing to be done and deadlines and budget’s thrown way out of original estimates.

A Good Project Management Plan (PMP), is a highly detailed document that can’t be rushed but if done correctly will have huge benefits on the project and will go a long way into ensuring is success. Every carefully thought out document will have its value to the project and can’t be rushed.

Risk Management Plans will need to include a huge reservoir of information gathered from, external experts, past projects, the Project team’s knowledge, environmental factors, laws and legislations and potential changes, internal and external threats and opportunities and much more. This is just the information gathering for one small part of a PMP and as you can see its going to take time to gather and digest before coming up with a plan on how to use the information within your project.

The story here is these things can not be rushed, they take time and effort to get correct, missing information or missing steps in the process just to rush a project through will lead to disaster.

Communicate!

Open and clear channels of communication through everyone in the project team is another big reason why projects fail, and yet is another point that is usually overlooked during planning.

There needs to be set procedures from the get go on how different parties involved in the project will be reached and the methods of communication used between all parties. We cant just set out the attitude of “email it me and I will have a look later”. Projects are carefully planned and full of deadlines, missing one deadline could cause a backlog of work that could end up holding up the entire project.

An example is if a project needs a certain piece of hardware before it can continue, if the project manager is just emailing the procurement department with no set procedures in place or processes lined out in the project to follow, that email may well just sit in someone’s inbox for days on end leading to the part not being ordered and holding up the whole project.

How we will communicate throughout a project is important and we need to properly set out the processes to avoid these kinds of mistakes.

Understand your resources

When planning your project and looking at your scope for budget and costs, you need to fully understand what resources you have within your company and where you might need external resources to fill in the gaps.

If you are looking to build a new finance system for the business filling your project team with IT experts is not going to have a high chance to succeed, you need to ensure you have the right mix of people who can deliver expertise on everything to do with your project. Understanding what skills and expertise you have available will help you better plan what extra resources you need to bring in, helping you better understand the costs of the project.

Embrace change

Projects at their core are big changes to a company. They are there to change things around to give added benefits to the organization after completion. This means by their very nature that projects are a leap into the unknown and will be volatile environments. Its important to understand this going into a project and to be open to the realization that everything will not always go to plan and things will need to change along the way, weather that be in the processes of doing tasks in the project or changes to the final product itself.

Not embracing change and trying to force something through that is no longer realistic is a certain way to ensure a project will fail.