It is an accepted facet of modern business management that projects are necessary to drive business forward, yet they are also widely recognised as high risk business activities, which is why so much time and effort is dedicated to the Management of Risk. Just ask yourself this question, "Given the four key variables of time, cost, quality and scope, plus the fifth element of change, realistically, what are your chances of delivering your project on time, and to cost, quality and within scope and of there being no harmful effect on the employees, the project or the business. Over recent years most people have focussed on the physical attributes of Project management and delivery and in the event that the project have failed they have been driven by the physical reasons why the projects fail.
In a recent survey among my network, 7 key reasons emerged as to why projects have failed:
Reason #1: Poor Communication
Communication is at the heart of all projects and change.
Reason #2: Poorly defined scope
Scope is one of the key variables in any project.
Reason #3: Scope & specification creep
After defining the scope it is Imperative that it is kept under control.
Reason #4: Poor Project Management
Project management is now seen as a core business skill yet so many companies have untrained project mangers.
Reason #5: Inadequate or unrealistic plans
A key element to any project is that the plan is achievable and deliverable.
Reason #6: Poor change management
Often the most successful projects fail because of poor change management which is linked very closely with communication.
Reason #7: Inexperienced Project Teams
One of the fundamental success criteria in any pro ject is to have the right skills to deliver the projects.
What you can about it
Often when projects fail senior management believe that the answer is more training and that training usually means technical training either in Project Management itself, or in the method that is being used. This approach has yielded good results over the years, yet so many projects are still failing leaving project mangers and their teams feeling that they have underperformed. IT, systems and software projects seem to get the most adverse publicity for this. Is it time to take a different approach.
A key Lesson
One of the key lessons that I have learned recently is that by understanding the psychology of delivering projects and then creating a culture of achievement we can significantly increase our chance of success and improve both our own and our team's performance.
If you're ready to transform your own achievement then take a c opy of my FREE e-book "7 Practical Steps to Transform Your Consulting Business" contains more guidance on transforming a consulting business and can be downloaded from http://www.harperhallettconsulting.co.uk/