The Reasons Why Project Fail

The Reasons Why Project Fail

There are various pitfalls that sink projects that had initially been destined to succeed. Different reasons have emerged as to why projects fail. One of the reasons leading to the failure of a project entails a lack of visibility; the three tiers of a project team (the executive, project managers and team members) need access to the right information at the correct time. The executive management usually complains that they lack visibility of all current enterprise projects; they lack access to the project schedules in time. At times, project managers provide the plan at the outset of a project and become gatekeepers of the schedule, and often claim to the executives that the project schedule has not been recently updated; therefore, not ready to be shared (Matta & Ashkenas, 2003). The executives lack access to a schedule until it is too late to redirect or cancel the project. The project managers are usually preoccupied with management issues and resources re-organization such that they lack time of updating the tasks on the project schedule and reviewing their impacts. In environments where projects are fast paced, a project manager work on several projects at the same time. This makes the project manager fail to know exactly the tasks that the resources are working on at a particular day. Therefore, the team members lack visibility regarding the tasks that they should work on, when dealing with multiple projects because they become confused by task priority. This leads to project failure; hence, the project manager can influence project outcomes through project scheduling.

Unclear project objectives constitute another reason for project failure. Some organizations fail to sufficiently define their strategies and goals. In case the top management is not clear regarding project priorities, then the entire organization will also be unclear regarding which projects to prioritize based on importance (Matta & Ashkenas, 2003). Most organizations become busy such that they forget a key constituent of success is taking the time to discuss goals and strategies for reaching the goals of a project. Most projects become eliminated for not matching with the goals of an organization (Tonnquist, 2009). Organizations have more project initiatives than they are capable of fulfilling; they embark on more initiatives than they should, leading to overworked and unhappy team members. Because of a lack of realistic and clear objective, an organization is not capable of organizing a project properly leading to the failure of the project. When multitasking projects, there must be a clear objective regarding which project to prioritize; failure of prioritizing overworks team members, which make some to leave an organization. This abandons a project in a hectic environment. Therefore, a project manager will influence the outcome of a project through project prioritizing.

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