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Project Failures and Project Success
Author: Herry Hendarto PMP  | Posted: 21-04-2007 | Comments: 0 | Views: 100 | Rating: (52)  (?) 
Some organizations and project managers tend to resort to simplistic view when it comes time to judge if the projects they are assigned to manage is a success. The tendency is more due to the most popular success criteria to measure the success from just the triple constraints of CTR or cost, time, and resource performance points of view.
In my view, there are really a lot of other success criteria or parameters on top of the triple constraints to measure success of a project and it has to be viewed from different stakeholders’ point of view.
Project is considered a Success when one is completed ahead of schedule or on time, within budget, which has been executed safely and has met or exceeded the many project performance parameters in technical, safety, quality, plant capacity, features, product specification, and in commercial sense or parameters from major stakeholders; and where the client is happy with what he has been given to the extent one can expect repeat order from the client; and other stakeholders share the success to the extent the project team is looking forward to working together as a team in an upcoming project.
I know and sort of agree this is a mouthful, and in fact it is; but it also reflects a project success in a more complete sense.
As we can see from above project success definition, it is perhaps easier to identify projects, which are generally recognized as unsuccessful if we are to identify where things have gone wrong, and hence what has to be done and how to prevent them to insure project success.
To my personal experience and some research that I have had opportunity to work on, project failures are primarily caused by one or more of the following:
SCHEDULE OVERRUN
MONATORY OVERRUN
RESOURCE AND SKILLS UNAVAILABILITY
CHANGING REQUIREMENTS
POOR SCOPE OF WORK DEFINITION & SPECIFICATIONS CHANGES
UNDERPERFORM ENVIRONMENTAL PARAMETERS
REGULATORY NON COMPLIANCE
UNREALISTIC CUSTOMER’S EXPECTATIONS
NO FUNCTIONAL INPUTS AT PLANNING STAGE
RESOURCE ARE OVER COMMITTED OR STRETCHED TOO THIN,
WRONG PERSON AS PROJECT MANAGER
NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TOTAL PROJECT
NO PROJECT ACCOUNTABILITY
NO SYSTEMS IN PLACE; NONE ADOPTED
In most cases the root causes of project failures have been attributed to one or more of the following:
1. Poor resource planning and management
2. Poor project communication management
3. Poor project management and leadership issues
4. Poor scope of work definition and specifications
5. Poor cost estimating and control
6. Poor time/schedule planning and control
And believe or not, failures in any projects are most likely caused by people issues than technical issues.
Article by Herry Hendarto PMP,
A project management mentor and coach, promoting good project management practices through www.projectmanagement-mentoring.com at HEROLIAN International.
Herry has over 25 years of working experience in the capacity as president, vice president, technical resource management, and in project management roles in a number of multi national companies in engineering, procurement, and construction of oil & gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, and refineries in the Asia Pacific region.
Email: herolian@projectmanagement-mentoring.com
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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/project-management-articles/project-failures-and-project-success-134947.html
 About the Author:Herry has over 25 years of working experience in the capacity as president, vice president, technical resource management, and in project management roles in a number of multi national companies in engineering, procurement, and construction of oil & gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, and refineries in the Asia Pacific region.
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