Are You My Rik? – What are Troubled Projects Costing Us? Flickr. Worldwide, troubled projects affect both public and private sector organizations. They often experience higher than expected costs, unmet schedules, and unfulfilled needs. High rates of project failure, especially in information technology (IT), projects, can often impact an organization’s business strategy and operations. While study after study details the bleak results of projects, government reports and case studies from companies provide many details about unhappy stakeholders. These dismal results are made more difficult by the economic downturn’s increased pressure to do more with less resources. Research and experience have shown that project management can save organizations millions of dollars in lost revenue. Recent years have seen high rates of project failure in the United States and abroad. The Standish Group’s studies over a period of several years are widely quoted.

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  • More than half of all projects are challenged due to schedule or cost overruns.
  • 15% of all projects fail because of project failures
  • About 34 percent of all projects are successful because of their project success rates.
  • For example, the lost dollar value of U.S. projects in 2002 was $38 billion with an additional $17 trillion in cost overruns. This amounts to a total project waste equal to $55 billion versus $255 billion in project spending.

Greg Balestrero (Executive Director of the Project Management Institute, the largest association of project managers worldwide) reports that the rate of projects that fail has not decreased in recent years. KPMG Information Risk Management documented that in 2002, 59% of organizations in Asia-Pacific experienced at least one project fail at an average cost $8.9 million. Africa, Europe, and the Americas were next with 56 percent of organizations reporting at most one project failure at an average cost $11.6 million. The Economist Intelligence Unit published 2007 results from a survey of 145 global senior executives from different industries about their current and future IT projects.

  • Twenty percent of executives said that more than half of their IT projects were either over- or late-budget in the last two years.
  • Only 13% of executives believed that their IT projects had delivered on the promises.
  • Poor project management was identified as the main cause of IT project failures.

Why is it so difficult? Details from organization-specific studies bring the reasons for troubled projects into clearer focus.? An audit of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office revealed that the FBI had failed to manage its IT investments and that it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on projects without any assurance they would deliver the intended benefits. (U.S. Department of Justice Audit Report, 2002). GAO’s analysis of 226 IT projects worth $6.4 billion from 24 federal agencies revealed that more than one third (79) of these projects were not meeting one or more of the following criteria. These include establishing clear baselines, keeping cost and schedule variances within 10 per cent, assigning a qualified manager, and avoiding duplication with others. Additional information is available at the state level on why projects fail. Texas found that of 48 large-scale projects, the average delay was 14 months. Cost overruns exceeded $352 million. Poor project management and a lack of quality control at project level were some of the contributing factors. a decrease in? Complexity of the project (Texas State Audi