Project Management

Project Management

Part A

Projects have clearly become a central activity in most organizations and companies are investing increasing resources in projects such as new product development, process improvement, or building new services. Many studies have demonstrated, however, that most projects do not meet time and budget goals, or fail to satisfy customer and/or company expectations. Yet, project success means more than just meeting time and budget goals. It involves additional success dimensions such as business results or preparing for the future. Regardless of the success criteria, researchers have tried for years to find the reasons for project success or failure. One of the most common approaches is the search for critical success factors. The assumption in these studies is that projects succeed or fail because of similar reasons and the researcher's objective is to identify these reasons. These studies produced list of typical factors such as, project mission, planning, communication, politics, control, top management support, technical tasks, etc. Yet, in spite of their popularity, critical success factors studies have had little impact on project management practices and few organizations or managers are actually using the findings of these studies to improve their managerial processes.

There are various reasons why a large numbers of projects fail to meet cost, time and/or performance objectives. Firstly, where all the people involved in the project are not agreed on what can be expected then there is little chance that the project will be successful. One person might be expecting a Rolls-Royce and another person might be expecting a Mini. But what the developer gives them is a Mondeo. In the end none of them will be satisfied

Secondly, if the project is a bad idea right from the beginning then it's not going to be successful. This could be because none of the users want it, or because it is ethically wrong and causes a reaction, or any one of lots of reasons.

Thirdly, poor communication between people involved in the project is similar to the expectation mismatch; unless people are kept up to date with what's going on it is likely that they'll be pulling in different directions. It can also cause bad feeling among the project team and between users and developers all users and management or developers and client.

Fourthly, if the staff assigned to the project don't have the right skills to carry out the tasks that are needed or to do the jobs that are needed then the project won't succeed. You have to have the right staff doing the right things at the right time. One people factor involved here could be people who can't say no. This often means that the project team promises something they can't deliver and stores up problems for later on.

Lastly, complex projects can be very difficult to predict and manage. With the best will in the world it's not always possible to meet deadlines. If there is complete inflexibility in delivery dates for parts in the project or the project overall then it ...