I have found 8 primary reasons that projects fail. I have created a program to help my customers solve these 8 problems and save failing projects. I have never run into a failing project that did not get fixed by applying one or more of these solutions.

• Define the Customer: Too often management forces the IT shop to treat other business units within the same organization as their "customer". That doesn't fly and stopping that solves many problems that are costing companies a small fortune. The old adage that "the customer is always right" hurts the IT shop when they are forced to consider their peers within the organization as "the customer", when the reality is they should be a team solving real customer needs.

• Force Choices: Clear the Weeds: Techniques like Agile permit indecision and muddy up true prioritization, separating needs from wants. Make the sponsor of the project pay for changes and you will be amazed at how effective your requirements elicitation and management gets.

• A-Z: Respect How the Brain Works. We learn through progressive elaboration. Set up your project processes the same way so you are educating your project teams not just shoving scope, time and costs down their throats.

• Comprehend and Follow Proven Processes: There is a reason that most successful projects follow proven processes. learn the processes that actually work and flush the hype down the proverbial toilet. Scope matters most, and don't let anyone ever tell you differently.

• Conduct feasibility Studies and Prototype: Turns out people no longer spend that time up front to determine the feasibility of a project before throwing energy at it. (refer back to #3). people have to know "what it looks like when it is done" or it is NEVER done.

• Manage Change: A change to a requirement must be tracked and its impact on the scope must be comprehended by everyone...not just the project manager and developer. New additions to the team require time and energy to absorb as well.

• Kill templates: If you are using templates to plan your projects you are losing your greatest chance to innovate and improve the communications between your project teams. Burn the templates, start communicating again.

• Lead Your Project Team: Inspiration in leadership is lacking. Taking responsibility for decisions, putting a stake in the ground and leading by example. from the top down (specifically in Government) "leaders" no longer lead they simply establish plausible deniability and blame everyone but themselves and their decisions. That should end today if you want any success in our future. A true project leader never blames someone else, and leads his/her team with enthusiasm and purpose. Anything worth doing is worth doing well!

 

Watch this introduction for a full explanation of the video and you can get the entire training video at the same site.  The introduction video is free and I trust it will help many of my friends here be more successful immediately.