How To Avoid Project Failure?

Project Failure - How To Define?

Historically, the definition of success on a project was viewed as accomplishing the work within the triple constraints i.e. time, scope & budget along with obtaining customer acceptance.

In today’s definition, success is when the planned business value is achieved within the imposed constraints and assumptions, and the customer receives the desired value.

I noticed that there is a poor understanding of project failure.

The project manager and the stakeholders can have different definitions of project failure.

The project manager’s definition might just be not meeting the competing constraints criteria. Stakeholders, on the other hand, might seem more interested in business value than the competing constraints once the project actually begins.

Stakeholders’ perception of failure might be:

• The project has become too costly for the expected benefits or value.
• The project will be completed too late.
• The project will not achieve its targeted benefits or value.
• The project no longer satisfies the stakeholders’ needs

This is the responsibility of project manager to ensure

1. Accurate displaying of project status
2. Early and accurate identification of trends
3. Early and accurate identification of problems
4. Reasonable determination of the project’s health
5. A source of critical information for controlling projects

Responsibility of the CIO is to motivate the team instead of saying "fire the person".