IT project management is the process of planning, organizing and delineating responsibility for the completion of organizations’ specific information technology (IT) goals.
According to the Project Management Institute, project management processes are guided through five stages: initiation, planning, executing, controlling and closing. Orderly IT project management is inherent to an organization’s IT strategy and is usually under the direction of the Chief Information Officer (CIO).
Planning and management are key elements to any successful project. Without planning or proper organizing of any project, you can quickly lose site, focus and stability. Our training manual helps you to understand with proper steps and management skills.
Why Projects Fail: an opinion from Greg Martin (Parthenon Consultancy Ltd.) based on his experience in the following definition, some reasons and problems.
Definition of Project Success and Failure.
Projects are successful if they deliver the required result within schedule and within budget.
If any one or more of these criteria are not met then the project has failed. Many project failure statistics have been published, and they mostly indicate that more than half of all projects fail.
Some Reasons for Project Failure.
Understanding why aspects of a project can fail is the key to understanding what needs to be done in order to improve the chances that a project will be successful.
- Lack of executive support and stakeholder involvement;
- Conflicts between stakeholders;
- Failure to produce or update the Business Case;
- Unrealistic time or resource estimates;
- Unclear or changing goals and objectives;
- Scope creep or feature creep;
- Lack of a change control system;
- Poor or absent quality control;
- Lack of adequate planning;
- Failure to communicate and act as a team;
- Poor or no requirements definition;
- Lack of required resources;
- Staff with inappropriate skills.
Problems with Middle and Senior Management Attitudes.
Middle and senior management attitudes that can contribute to project failure include:
- Political decisions to exclude some stakeholders from consultation;
- Appointment of a hard-hitting “firefighter” project manager to a project that requires a strategic thinker;
- Lack of knowledge of how to implement culture change;
- Petty disputes between senior individuals or departments cause stagnation;
- Lack of feedback of failure warning signals from staff due to a culture of management by edict;
- Failure to have or to communicate the business case leads to a lack of direction;
- Viewing project management as merely the ability to use a project planning software tool, whereas it is the orchestration of human resources to capture requirements, plan the project, report progress, control risks and formally accept what the project delivers;
- Budget restrictions limit the upfront investment of time, causing downstream costs when correcting problems that were avoidable.
Project management is primarily a philosophy of people management. It is not just a technique, software tool or an administrative function.
True Project Management requires an “active” manager, not a “reactive” one.
To find out more about Greg and Parthenon, go to https://www.parthenon.uk.com/project-failure.htm.