It’s always been a fascination for me. Some figure close to 80% of IT projects fall short of their original goal, many or even the majority by a huge margin. By fall short I mean some end result like costs doubling, often alongside timescales also doubling. In the worst case, millions are spent and the result never even goes live – I have personally come across such a project recently, having been asked to review it close to go live date.

And yet most of the underlying causes of project failure are easy to identify.

So, here are my top 5 causes of project failure:

1. Weak project structure and relationship to the business
2. Inexperienced project management
3. Poor role and responsibility discipline
4. Inability or ignorance of the relationships with implementation contractor
5. Absence of meaningful project metrics

I’d draw your eye to an interesting point:

Project success or failure isn’t primarily driven by the technology choices themselves. Instead, it’s largely driven by what is put around the technology.

I’d like to expand on these points over coming weeks. Watch this space.