Tag: Project Management

Strategic Project Success Rates – A road to nowhere?

Just over two years into an MBA you start to ask yourself questions, is this worth all the effort? Perhaps a masters in cooking would be easier and more lucrative.  Business management is difficult!  As I review the question “why are over 50% of all strategic projects failing?” I’ve hit a blank, are the strategic project success rates simply a road to nowhere? And endless pit of change with no mastery, no long-term success, no sustainable adding of value to organisation?

I encounter theory after theory, model after model and clever answers that could fill entire libraries. The challenge is; with all these clever answers around, why is the track record of strategic projects so poor? Success statistics from the invention of the modern day project (in the early 1960’s ) tell the same sad story, half of projects attempted fail (and are still failing).  What are we missing?

Today project and product education is at an all time time high, you find hundreds of books on expert strategic management and how to tame the proverbial project dragon, yet in the cold light of day, all this has affected the project success rate with exactly naught %. Do we continue along the same vein, introducing more and more processes, more and more education, more and more roles and responsibilities?

As we stand today, the primary method organisations deliver their strategies are through projects, perhaps its time to reconsider. We need to take a sober look at our project execution process and frameworks, not to try another ‘expert theory’ but rather to take onboard some of the knowledge and practical know-how that is being shared by our teams around the coffee pauses area’s and lunch rooms.

21st February 2015 Add Comment

Why are nearly 50% of all Strategic Projects Failing?

We need to address this challenge immediately and stop so many strategic projects failing by changing our project approach

Can you venture a guess as the number of Strategic Projects Failing? According to a recent PMI report* nearly 50% of all projects fail globally, across all sectors and all industries. This is a shocking statistic! What is not surprising is the huge sigh of relief we all feel when we look at our own basket of project driven initiatives and acknowledge that this global stats probably accurately reflects our status-quo.

The question that emerges is “Can industry continue to support this level of success? “. In a word, No.  In a world were innovation , renovation and transformation is required by the bucket-full we cannot be losing nearly 1 out of every 2 dollars (Rand) spent on  these projects. These arrays of quick-sand projects severely hamper the ability of the organisation to pivot to market demand, competitor activity or new opportunities. We need to address this challenge immediately and stop so many strategic projects failing.

How to prevent Strategic Projects Failing:

  1. Review the way projects are defined, measured and controlled. How much tolerance is acceptable to maintain scope and budget? At what point should a project be considered nonviable and be terminated.
  2. Define a list of “kill point” criteria applicable to the project at its definition.
  3. Hold stakeholders accountable to the results of their decisions which result in scope and cost deviations.
  4. Dramatically improve they way projects are planned; initially and continuously throughout the life cycle of the project.
  5. Ensure the project teams are sufficiently educated in the project approach which the organisation has chosen, and not their own definitions of what or how something needs to be done.

To implement these changes within established project organisations will require complete buy-in from senior management. But the number speak for themselves; the strategic projects failing are simply too high and require a drastically new approach to find success.

*PMI, 2014, The high cost of low performance.

15th February 2015 Add Comment