Projects do fail. In some organizations projects fail even more so regularly than others. But why projects fail in first place? Is it project manager's fault, PMO's fault, sponsor's fault, client's fault or organization's fault? Well, we have seen clients facing all sorts of issues with project success rates. Hardly we have seen an organization that has 100% success rate. We are listing some of the common reasons why projects fail. It is not an exhaustive list and is just indicative list that can be significantly expanded, but we attempt to cover the common reasons we have seen organizations battle with,

• Poor portfolio management processes
• Scope ambiguity
• Poor organizational goal definitions
• Missing due diligence
• Wrong sponsor leadership
• Poor project planning
• Unguarded baselines
• Poor governance
• Poor change management
• Quality compliance issues
• Poor stake holder management
• Poor resource forecasts and issues
• Wrong or poor resource applications
• Unavailability of appropriate necessary tools or competences
• Poor risk management
• Poor issue management
• Poor incident management
• Poor or inefficient communications
• Poor vendor selection or management
• Competitor movement
• etc...

List can keep going on and on. Although some indicative and common reasons identified are listed above.

Project failures or need for recovery are both sure to leave negative impact to organization. Millions of dollars worth damage we are talking about. And aggregate cost of failure to the organization can be even more significant. Project failure should not be an option if you ask organizational leaders. But projects still fail for quite diverse range of reasons.

Based on your experience what problems did you face in your projects? And how did you overcome them? Let us know.