Why IT Projects Fail
Projects fail, in fact lots of projects fail. Depending on where you look the measure is between 62-84% of IT projects that fail. No matter which end of the spectrum, that is a lot of projects that fail.
There are a number of reasons projects fail. Here are just a few:
33% of projects have no understanding of a baseline
A project is an initiative for creating change. Without understanding the current state of affairs, without capturing the baseline how can the impact be measured. How can success be achieved without understanding if the intended impact has been made. How do we learn without understanding if the impact was positive or negative.
45% of Project Managers report that benefits realisation is one of the most difficult processes to embed
Benefits realisation is the process of measuring the impact of the implemented change and ensuring it is providing the benefits it was intended to. Many organisations make the assumption that once a project is delivered it will have the desired effect and therefore do not explicitly measure. The measurement not only allows an organisation to be sure of the return on investment, but also to learn when an impact falls short or is stronger than anticipated. Understanding the whys of both success and failure is important to understanding where to go next.
23% of business and IT executives are in agreement about the success of a project when it is completed
Even when success is achieved there is disagreement as to what that success actually is. This was put very well to me by a colleague. When everyone is in a room talking about delivering "x", everyone feels they are aligned, however when they walk out of the room with some thinking "x" is "X", or Helvetica, or Comic Sans, or 12 point font, even though the alignment was thought to be there, there is still a misalignment in the execution. All assumptions must be explored to clarify and complete the alignment.
80% of PMOs feel that benefits realisation is not in scope
Once the initiative is delivered it is no longer the responsibility of the delivery team right? Well, sure maybe, but then who is accountable for ensuring it does what it is supposed to do. Organisation often do not explicitly giving responsibility for benefits realisation being carried out. It is an unfortunate fact that the launch of an initiative is often understood to be the success. An initiative is not successful until it starts to measurably achieve its goals.
80% of project management executives are not aware of how their efforts align with the business strategy
Whilst stunning (at least it was to me) it is unfortunately very true, and could be extended to the entire team rather than just PM execs. Many of the people involved in delivering an initiative are not fully aware of how that initiative is intended to benefit an organisation and how that initiative aligns to the overall strategy.
Overall these boil down to a misunderstanding of what success means, misrepresented pictures of success, invalid view of progress, and teams that do not have a way to understand the impact of their day to day decisions with regards to success.
So how do you create success?
Success happens when there is a clear alignment on what success actually means and most importantly when a team is fully empowered to make the right decisions at the right times.
Some key requirements for success:
Clear communication
A team should always feel they can talk to any of the stakeholders in an initiatives, "straight from the horses mouth" as it is put. A team should also always feel safe challenging an initiative. If parts of an initiative cannot be defended then perhaps they shouldn't be put in place, or perhaps it is a good place to focus to align the team on the benefits of those areas specifically. If the team delivering the initiative cannot see the benefit, will the people on the receiving end?
Alignment
What success means must be absolutely clear and should be fully internalised by the team delivering so that they are making their day to day decisions based on the impact to success and the value contributed to the overall success. Each member of the team should be able to answer "what is the most important thing for me to do today", and specifically answer that without needing to check with anyone else. With a complete alignment on success each individual and team can make the exact same decisions the key stakeholders would make without needing to set up meetings to ask.
Empowerment
Ensure that a team can make the decisions they need to make. When the team runs in to a problem that requires decisions to be made, it is usually something that has "cropped up". Usually these types of decisions are stopping progress for the team and creating bottlenecks. Give the teams all of the information they need to make the right decisions and trust the teams to make the right decisions. If the team are making the wrong decisions then potentially they are not operating with the correct information.
Transparency
Ensure the team has the right tools to understand the impact they make everyday. There is nothing more frustrating than making decisions only to find out down the road they were the wrong decisions. Give access to the information needed to make sure teams can create fast feedback cycles and strong cycles of reinforcement.
Out of these alignment and understanding the value that each individual is driving every day is most important. When you sit back and think about all of the hard times you have gone through in life and the times that you knew completely why you were dong what you were doing, you got through them. It didn't make it easier, but you got through them. And most likely those are the times you talk about and remember most fondly now that you have been through them. Ensure that everyone on the team understands their value, how they are making a difference, and how important they are no matter their role.
Create teams that are proud of what they achieve. Create teams that focus on and deliver value because they understand the value.
References:
https://www.geneca.com/blog/software-project-failure-business-development
https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/white-papers/chaos-report.pdf
IT Projects fails when its misaligned with expectation