Why Do Projects Fail Miserably

Why Do Projects Fail Miserably
By Patricia Goh

Project management tools are great for the use of one single project. But with multiple projects in hand? That requires more than brains and skills to juggle. Multi-project management calls for a good resource planning tool. When using a resource planning software, you are allowing yourself to focus on the project in a more efficient way.

A whopping 90% of projects costing over $10 million fail. Why is that? With the amount of resources and budget available to these projects, why do most fail so miserably? Just this year, the PM Institute published their statistics on the top contributors to large IT project failure. Of which the four main categories of reasons were unclear objectives, unrealistic schedule, shifting requirements and unaligned team.

Top contributors to large IT project failure

Figure 1: Top contributors to large IT project failure

All these reasons trickle from one common factor – leadership. A project leader or manager is required to have everything regarding the project inline. However, a project manager isn’t a one man band, delegation and teamwork are crucial necessities to the likelihood of success. Among many things, leadership and teamwork require good communication, clear goals and effective collaboration methods. Using tools to get these attributes into place will increase success rate. Last year, 77%* of companies use project management software, while 87% high-performance companies use project management software. This goes to show that software usage is highly regarded in successful companies.

Project management tools are great for the use of one single project. But with multiple projects in hand? That requires more than brains and skills to juggle. Multi-project management calls for a good resource planning tool. When using a resource planning software, you are allowing yourself to focus on the project in a more efficient way. Not only you can quickly dive into how your resources are progressing, your team can also be aware of how the project is going, what’s more to be done and how quickly it needs to move forward.

So it all comes down to the question: ‘What do you need to look for in a resource scheduling software?’ Depending on your budget you might be looking for a free resource management software. On top of that, accessibility must be taken into account. When your employees are out and about in the field, it must be possible for them to access the most updated version of the plan. With so many resource scheduling software, the best way to select one that fits your needs the best is to sign up for demos and give them a try. Be sure to include your team when you are trying out new possibilities so that they can also pitch in about if these are suitable platforms to work on and integrate into the current work process.

* Source – Information Week: Enterprise Project Management Survey 2014

Patricia Goh is a product specialist at Ganttic where she helps managers better utilise their resources and meet project goals. She provides guidance on resource planning and visual scheduling using Ganttic. Find out more about capacity utilisation, resource planning and project management insights at www.ganttic.com/blog.

PMHut Team

PMHut Team

PMHut.com is a website dedicated to providing PM articles, detailed project management software reviews, and the latest news for the most popular web-based collaboration tools.

Leave a Reply