A question I’ve asked myself throughout my career is around why do projects fail?
It’s a personal impact to me as I work in the projects world.
I spend my time in organisations but in ‘temporary bubbles’ called projects and programmes which are spun-up to make some change happen and then disband somewhere down the road.
Invariably, the projects have a bumpy ride. The bumps come in various areas be it around money, timelines or scope of what’s delivered.
The Data on Failure
I came across some great research into the success rates of projects.
I attended a Meetup in London by Martin Paver’s Project Data analytics meetup group where a chap called Alex Budzier was presenting a talk all about why projects fail.
Alex, it turns out, works out of Oxford Uni and has undertaken research with the Saiid Business School into 12,000 projects over decades in multiple industries.
The outcome of this research I found shocking and intriguing at the same time.
Project Failure Rates
The research shows that projects struggle to meet the most basic targets:
- Nine out of Ten Transport projects
- Six out of Ten Energy projects
- Five out of Ten Technology projects
There was the nteh Ten out of Ten Olympics projects that capped off this list of projects that do not meet their cost targets.
Constant Failure
The more shocking part was the regularity of the findings that projects fail.
The data goes back decades and the pattern is miserably constant – regardless of the sector or geography or seemingly nature of the projects there is a clear view.
The pattern is so clear in fact that Alex and his co-researcher Bent have coined the term the ‘Iron the Law’ of projects.
“Over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again.”
– Alex Budzier, Bent Flyvbjerg [2015]
Key Statistic
The key statistic that came out of this talk was the fact that only 0.5% of Projects are classed as successful with success being:
- On Time
- On Budget/Cost
- Delivered on Benefits
So for me, who works in Project-land and has done for a number of years with first-hand experience of how projects work in banks, government, IT services and others, this was a killer blow and somewhat depressing.
You see I’d experienced projects in failure mode.
In fact I’ve seen it many times which gave the research a lot of validity in my own experience of project delivery.
So I set upon a course to investigate the reasons why projects fail and to find ways to share the lessons and remedies to help others and hopefully improve the meagre 0.5% statistic that so irked me at Alex’s presentation.
Read on…