and found a surprising degree of consensus. Here is my synthesis.
It is worth keeping in mind that definitive project autopsy is rarely possible. The causes given are, therefore, the collected opinions of what went wrong in respondents’ particular projects. These are always going to be blurred by a certain amount of subjectivity.
Furnishing specific examples of each cause is tricky. Only the most spectacular of failures make their way into the public domain. In my experience, organisations usually like to forget about projects that have failed to deliver against their business cases. There is usually a “lessons learned” exercise but these tend to be superficial because of the natural desire to move on quickly from failure. They also tend to look at secondary causes because blaming individuals is embarrassing. At best the "lessons learned" exercise will result in some minor process tweaks, buried deep in a document somewhere, rather than any fundamental change.
Even when a failure is as spectacular as the Sainsbury’s Warehouse Automation Project which made it into production in 2003 but was later scrapped in 2005, with a reported write-off of £260 million, private sector organisations do not talk openly about root causes. That’s not surprising, given the top two causes in the list above. Together they can be summarised in one word: leadership. It is bad enough that shareholders find out about failures. Admitting that the failure occurred because of a lack of leadership at the most senior levels would need a resignation letter alongside. It’s easier to blame the technology or the supplier. But projects usually fail because of people not technology.
Private sector “spectaculars” do, however, get publicly scrutinised for causes, because there are public bodies whose remit is to dig into what went wrong.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Virtual Case File” Project that was written off in 2005 , after spending $170 million.
In the UK, ultimate public scrutiny is conducted by The Public Accounts Committee, a committee of Members of Parliament.
In one way or another, these two public projects above cover all of the top 5 causes listed above. They demonstrate that even when a project is high profile and expensive, leadership can go missing in action.
In 2005, two of the UK’s government agencies (The National Audit Office and the Office of Government Commerce) published a document entitled “Common Causes of Project Failure”.
“Lack of clear links between the project and the organisation's key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.
Lack of skill and proven approach to project and risk management.