A video introduction to the Vistogram
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Anyone whose been in the project and programme management space for a while will have witnessed failure. Whether creeping and inevitable, sudden and catastrophic or a shade of grey (and perhaps every shade of grey) in between. There is a frequency and consistency to investment failure which is so ingrained, I think everyone has come to think of it as ‘the norm’. A lot has been written about project failure.
In the coming years, expenditure on capital projects will reach USD 9 trillion1. Depending on what you read, 11.4% of that investment will fail2. That’s a little over a trillion dollar write-off. More sobering still is the corresponding benefits will be forfeit too.
Every year, the Project Management Institute (of which the author is a member) conducts an annual survey of project management practitioners2. The 2020 survey included responses from 3,060 project professionals, 358 senior executives and 554 directors of project management. I’ve rolled up the headline causes below.
- Change in project objectives
- Change in organisation priorities
- Poor requirements gathering / management
- Poor upfront planning
I find the this somewhat lacking in credibility. It doesn’t tally with my experience over the best part of two decades. Admittedly the factors cited can play a part. However, while the various shortcomings are relatively common-place, I don’t think they’re particularly significant in terms of their overall contribution to investment failure. I’m not sure anyone else believes they are particularly significant either.
Another point that should be born in mind is that post implementation reviews are notorious for lacking rigour or not being done at all. So perhaps any reliance on their findings should be limited.
Here’s an interesting thought exercise. How many investments fail because of corruption? It undoubtedly does happen3. How many post implementation reviews assess the role of corruption as an underlying cause of investment failure? Not many.
My instinct is that if you can’t trust some of the data, you can’t trust any of the data.
Are hiring managers, sponsors and professional bodies responding sensibly? I’m certain they’re not.
Hiring managers seem distracted by hiring project leaders with domain expertise aligned to their project’s goals. Yet, there’s no evidence that projects fail due to a lack of domain expertise. Fairly decisive data from HireRight4 indicates that at best, only 50% of your hires are being truthful on their CVs. This feels a more likely contributor to project failure than the absence of any particularly sought-after domain expertise.
Elsewhere, the APM recently published its Dynamic Conditions for Project Success5. It identifies 9 key success indicators (KSIs) which are felt by the authors to influence project success. They include interpersonal skills, training and certifications and team ethos among other things. All worthy contenders whatever your precise feelings on the matter.
But here’s is an important point. The factors that encourage, underpin and assist project success do not exclude in any way some fairly weighty and decisive causes of project failure. We could call these KFIs or key failure indicators.
Meticulous adherence and attention to the Dynamic Conditions for Project Success may tip the needle in the direction of success. However, they are as nothing when compared to the inertia imparted to investments by poor decision making, an inadequate business case, mis-application (or no application) of the most basic project management mechanisms to name but a few.
We, the project management domain (whatever that means), seem to be disinclined to call out unambiguously the causes of project failure. And, thereafter, to put in place rigorous controls which will assure and govern investments away from harm’s way.
What can be reliably deduced from the data however is that whatever are the actual causes of project failure, incompetence, negligence and self-interest are clearly never the underlying cause of project failure.
Project failure is the most valuable source of information to lead and guide future success but only if we collect the right data, interpret it correctly and apply it diligently.
Barnaby Davies is a project and programme management professional. Omnivisto is a company with a bright vision for how portfolios and programmes can be tracked, managed and delivered.
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026378631630109
[4] https://www.hireright.com/PDFs/2021_Benchmark_Global_Report.pdf
[5] https://www.apm.org.uk/media/50404/apm-dynamic-conditions-for-project-success-2021.pdf
