Generally project failures is associated with multiple factors and no clear objective line as to the meaning of project failure

or the magnitude of the failure rate many questions need to be answered, how bad is the situation? Do large percent of projects really fail or do we only hear the of bad news? What does it mean failure and success of a project? And lastly, what can be done to improve your success quotient? Although this paper is not interested in success or how to improve success but based on the causes of project failure this way if the causes are known improving success may be easy. As such let us start by looking at project failure rates and why projects fail.

projects fail too often because the project scope was not fully appreciated and/or user needs not fully understood.

Lack of management continuity and an incentive system that encourages overly optimistic estimates of the benefits that can be attained from doing the project.

tells that projects fail because of poor alignment between IT departments and business users.

process cops and report compilers and loose sight of what theyre supposed to be doing to make sure projects are running effectively.

because the average project is like an iceberg 9/10ths of it lay hidden from view.

Resolution Type 1 is a Project Success Resolution Type 2 is Project Challenged. Resolution Type 3 is termed Project Impaired/Failed

The top 5 factors found in successful projects are: 1. User Involvement 2. Executive Management Support 3. Clear Statement of Requirements 4. Proper Planning 5. Realistic Expectations The top 5 indicators found in Challenged projects are: 1. Lack of User Input 2. Incomplete Requirements & Specifications 3. Changing Requirements & Specifications 4. Lack of Executive Support 5. Technical Incompetence And finally a list of all the top factors found in Failed projects 1. Incomplete Requirements 2. Lack of user involvement 3. Lack of Resources 4. Unrealistic Expectations 5. Lace of Executive Support 6. Changing Requirements & Specifications 7. Lack of Planning 8. Didnt Need it Any Longer 9. Lack of IT management 10. Technical Illiteracy Good Planning

The first indicator, Good Planning, requires excellent forward planning, which includes detailed planning of the process implementation stages, task timeliness, fallback positions, and re-planning. Notice that initial planning is not enough. Projects often take wrong turns, or initial solutions prove unfounded. The project manager who does not prepare to re-plan, or has not considered and planned fall-back positions when initial plans fail, will often find that the project first stalls, and then fails. We must remember that project management is not a straight-line process, but an iterative process that requires agile rethinking as the known environment changes before your eyes. Clear Responsibility and Accountability of Team Members This requires that all team members have a clear understanding of their roles and duties in the project. They must understand how expectations vs. achievements will be measured and graded. It is left to the project manager to properly implement the communication of these responsibilities, to provide feedback, and to assure all understand that for which they will be held accountable. Schedule Control This requires the continual monitoring and measurement of time, milestones, people, and equipment schedules. Properly done schedule control will also give the first hint that initial planning may not be going according to schedule. If you pickup on these hints, you have an opportunity to implement a fallback position and/or re-plan to get back on track. The same paper finds two attributes that appeared equally for projects that succeeded or failed. These two were: Use of Consultants, and Well Qualified Personnel. Equal numbers of successful and failed projects used consultants, and the same was true for well-qualified personnel. It is perhaps disappointing that these two attributes did not portend project success. Obviously there are many other variables that hold great weight in determining the ultimate outcome of an IT project. Lack of Efficient Internal Communication Links, Lack of Efficient External Communication Links, Lack of Responsive Decision Making, and Lack of Effective Teamwork. These appeared most frequently in a negative context in failed projects.

1.

Clearly defined goals (including the general project philosophy or general mission of the project, as well as commitment to those goals on the part of the team members).

2.

Competent project manager. The importance of initial selection of skilled (interpersonally, technically, and administratively) project leader.

3.

Top Management Support. Top or divisional management support for the project that has been conveyed to all concerned parties.

4.

Competent project team members. The importance of selecting and, if necessary, triaging project team members.

5.

Sufficient resource allocation. These are Resources in the form of money, personnel, logistics, etc.

6.

Adequate communication channels. Sufficient information is available on the project objectives, status, changes, organizational coordination, clients needs, etc.

7.

Control Mechanisms. (Including planning, schedules, etc.). Programs are in place to deal with initial plans and schedules.

8.

Feedback capabilities. All parties concerned with the project area able to review project status, make suggestions, and corrections through formal feedback channels or review meetings.

9.

Responsiveness to client. All potential users of the project are consulted with and kept up to date on project status. Further, clients receive assistance after the project has been successfully implemented.

10. Client consultation. The project team members share solicited input from all potential clients of the project. The project team members understand the needs of those who will use the systems. 11. Technical tasks. The technology that is being implemented works well. Experts, consultants, or other experienced project managers outside the project team have reviewed and critiqued the basic approach.

12. Client Acceptance. Potential clients have been contacted about the usefulness of the project. Adequate advanced preparation has been done to best determine how to sell the project to the clients. 13. Trouble-shooting. Project team members spend a part of each day looking for problems that have surfaced or are about to surface. Project team members are encouraged to take quick action on problems on their own initiative. Incorrect data collection: Generally, before the civil engineering project there is a survey of site. E.g. in three Gorges Dam in China, different teams were conducting the survey of the site, so that the USD 20 Billion Project becomes a huge success for all the organisations involved. There was geological team, there were seismologists, there were chemical analysts, etc. they conducted a through survey to know the details of the site, before and after the dam is build. Now if the survey team has been found not exerting to record updated data, the project would fail. In other case if Detailed Project Report (DPR) team depends on very old data recorded somewhere then also the project may fail. Hence latest data has its importance. Also, Geological and Geographical changes that will be developed due to pressure of Dam water that could lead to Earthquake effects also had its importance. If they are not considered then it may lead to faulty design of the whole structures of the project. Indian Railways (IR) had a bitter experience in one of its Project where soil investigation data recorded was based on very old record. At the time of designing foundation of major bridge of Railway Track. The old data recorded was found to be wrong as per the present conditions which were due to rapid geological changes in that area. If IR had considered it to be correct the foundation for the major bridge could have been wrong. In fact the bridge would have been down within few months of its construction. The remedy was IR had to go further down for the foundation for safety purpose. This had resulted in loss of time and financial overruns. Not acquiring whole piece of land required: Some times it happens that construction activities are started only after getting some portion of demarcated land and keeping efforts to get the

other important part of the land. After completing lot of construction, some time the other part of land can not be acquired and get delayed very much. This is also a cause of concern for delay and additional financial burden on the client which is not included in the estimate. Sudden change/s in pre-planned capacity: In one case, a project was started for a preplanned and approved capacity of 'A' size. All the arrangements were made accordingly. However, after some time under some political pressure it was planned for enhanced capacity 'B' without thinking over pros and cons. The result was inevitable, after 5 years the project was closed, for want of additional resources and time. In short, there was shortage of water, lack of sufficient electrical energy, non availability of raw material in that part of country, land acquisition was a big problem, availability of more skilled man power became a problem, adding fuel were, the non availability of viable roads and advanced technology as the project was not previewed from time to time for this enhanced capacity. It delayed the project and later on it was closed for not being viable option. Inadequate fund flow: It has been observed that some projects have been started with limited financial resources on some assurance. After investing lot of available cash and loans the further requirement of fund flow could not be fulfilled and the project remained incomplete resulting in total Failure. Labour Unrest: Valuable working hours are lost due to causeless labour unrest created by some political parties or labour unions or people having vested interest. In almost every country on this earth, every political party has its own labour union or people having support to some ideology. Their demands are never ending. The major problem among these people is that they should think telescopically than microscopically. They should think that if they are BPL (Below Poverty Line) at present moment then after well planned hard work they could come up as APL (Above Poverty Line). However, ideology and practical never goes hand in hand and thus, due to continuous strikes and intermittent closure of work, the most valuable man days are lost and production is affected. It increases the cost of the production on one hand and on the other hand the workers get fewer

wages. The low paid employees thus never recoup and the wages are lost and they remain BPL from generation to generation. Bad political influence: Many experts claim that even if all the above points are taken care of well in advance in some countries like India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, there is no guarantee of showing political maturity. There are hundreds of examples where the government of "A" political party has sanctioned and started a project for the benefit of public the government of "B" political party coming in power will not allot sufficient funds for that project to be completed in time or will stop it which results in national loss. Imagine a situation like in Italy where there were 19 governments in 17 years. Hence, we must state here that, the projects are started in national interest for the benefit of all the citizens. Hence, they should be completed on time, in the larger interest of public. The political leader from a particular party, who comes as an administrator should not have interference in it to spoil or stop but to apply his skill to complete early in a better way to add value in the project and to add in his list of achievements in place of showing his bankruptcy of political maturity. No one shows maturity that other political party started this project and our political party has completed it in the interest of nation. It is the same story, 1950's through 2010, the on job Project Leaders find all kinds of deficiencies as explained above to complete the project in scheduled target. Hence this article to alert the government/s and peoples from various nations.

It is delivered on time. It is on or under budget. The system works as required.

1. Lack of User Involvement Lack of user involvement has proved fatal for many projects. Without user involvement nobody in the business feels committed to a system, and can even be hostile to it. If a project is to be a success senior management and users need to be involved from the start, and continuously throughout the development. This requires time and effort, and when the people in a business are already stretched, finding time for a new project is not high on their priorities. Therefore senior management need to continuously support the project to make it clear to staff it is a priority. 2. Long or Unrealistic Time Scales Long timescales for a project have led to systems being delivered for products and services no longer in use by an organisation. The key recommendation is that project timescales should be short, which means that larger systems should be split into separate projects. There are always problems with this approach, but the benefits of doing so are considerable. Many managers are well aware of the need for fast delivery, leading to the other problem of unrealistic timescales. These are set without considering the volume of work that needs to be done to ensure delivery. As a result these systems are either delivered late or only have a fraction of the facilities that were asked for. The recommendation here is to review all project plans to see if they are realistic, and to challenge the participants to express any reservations they may have with it. 3. Poor or No Requirements Many projects have high level, vague, and generally unhelpful requirements. This has led to cases where the developers, having no input from the users, build what they believe is needed, without having any real knowledge of the business. Inevitably when the system is delivered business users say it does not do what they need it to. This is closely linked to lack of user involvement, but goes beyond it. Users must know what it is they want, and be able to specify it precisely. As non-IT specialists this means normally they need skills training.

4. Scope Creep Scope is the overall view of what a system will deliver. Scope creep is the insidious growth in the scale of a system during the life of a project. As an example for a system which will hold customer records, it is then decided it will also deal with customer bills, then these bills will be provided on the Internet, and so on and so forth. All the functionality will have to be delivered at one time, therefore affecting time scales, and all will have to have detailed requirements. This is a management issue closely related to change control. Management must be realistic about what is it they want and when, and stick to it.

5. No Change Control System Despite everything businesses change, and change is happening at a faster rate then ever before. So it is not realistic to expect no change in requirements while a system is being built. However uncontrolled changes play havoc with a system under development and have caused many project failures. This emphasises the advantages of shorter timescales and a phased approach to building systems, so that change has less chance to affect development. Nonetheless change must be managed like any other factor of business. The business must evaluate the effects of any changed requirements on the timescale, cost and risk of project. Change Management and its sister discipline of Configuration Management are skills that can be taught. 6.Poor Testing The developers will do a great deal of testing during development, but eventually the users must run acceptance tests to see if the system meets the business requirements. However acceptance testing often fails to catch many faults before a system goes live because:

Poor requirements which cannot be tested Poorly, or non planned tests meaning that the system is not methodically checked Inadequately trained users who do not know what the purpose of testing is Inadequate time to perform tests as the project is late

Users, in order to build their confidence with a system, and to utilise their experience of the business, should do the acceptance testing. To do so they need good testable requirements, well designed and planned tests, be adequately trained, and have sufficient time to achieve the testing objectives.