Why are more projects failing ?

4
29 April 09

Standish Group just came out with 2009 edition of their famous CHAOS Report: (text highlighting and underlining is mine)

“Boston, Massachusetts, April 23, 2009 - New Standish Group report shows more project failing and less successful projects.

The Standish Group’s just-released report, “CHAOS Summary 2009,” “This year’s results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects succeeding which are delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions” says Jim Johnson, chairman of The Standish Group, “44% were challenged which are late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions and 24% failed which are cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used.”

“These numbers represent a downtick in the success rates from the previous study, as well as a significant increase in the number of failures”, says Jim Crear, Standish Group CIO, “They are low point in the last five study periods. This year’s results represent the highest failure rate in over a decade“.

This seems to be quite an anti-progress and is highly discouraging to say the least. The timing of the report itself couldn’t have been any more worse - with current economic situation, not too many dollars are available for projects, and whatever dollars are there, don’t seem to be getting a good mileage. I have not read the report yet, but I am eager to learn why the failure rates have shot up once again. In the last decade, we have certainly improved our ability to manage projects (or so we thought), have migrated to supposedly-better methods, have more virtual projects, more multi-site work, etc. In terms of tools, we probably are sitting on a pile of tools. When it comes to people, we probably have the highest number of professionally qualified and experienced managers than ever before. So, is it that newer challenges have caught up with our current capabilities ? Are these failures primaily because of offshore work, or virtual teams, or expectations of Web-based projects, or something much more fundamental to a project…the people ??? Either ways, it promises to be a great eye-opener, and I am as eager as you to explore this study further.

Study apart, do you also think project failure rates have shot up in the last 5-10 years ?

Why are more projects failing ?

: Project Management
: , , , ,
  • http://www.pmhut.com Project Management Hut

    You can find a comparative review of the current and the previous Standish reports in this article: http://www.pmhut.com/the-chaos-report-2009-on-it-project-failure

    • http://managewell.net TV

      Thanks ! Much appreciate your article comparing the top-level stats on Standish’s project performance rates over the years. Once more information about the report is available in public domain, we will have more clarity. I am particularly interested in how the Top 10 reasons have changed over the years - does it signify a shift in the type of problems we are solving, or an inadequacy of the current state of methods and tools, or change in the way customers and other stakeholders look at how their problems should be solved, and so on.

  • http://www.innergysoftware.com Victor

    Interesting, thanks for the update on Standish. I have a post on it myself, but I’m referring to an older study. I believe one reason for more failure is increased complexity in societies (and, in particular, in software projects). Technology is becoming more sophisticated, competition from various vendors is intensifying, and at the same time resources (e.g. money to invest) are becoming more scarce. I’ve read a book called “The collapse of complex societies” and I think principles from it apply equally to our society and to software.

  • http://lig-tv-izle.komikya.org Lig tv izle

    i like it. it’s perfect. Thank you very much for this article.

    Lig tv izle

Calotropis Theme designed by itx
%d bloggers like this: