FACTORS OF PROJECT SUCCESS

As a project manager, you are ultimately responsible for delivering a successful project. The
buck stops with you, so it is in your interest to make sure relevant tools and techniques are used
to make this happen. Some of the following may sound obvious, but I encounter these basic
mistakes month in month out, with project managers left scratching their heads wondering where
it all went wrong.

1. Business Case
Make sure there is a strong business case, that everyone can buy into, with high level support.
The business case is the justification for the project and should list the expected benefits. This is
something everyone involved in the project can focus on and the reason the project is taking
place. Projects move us from one state to another by delivering a change, product or other
desired outcome, with a business case explaining why.

2. Critical Success Factors

Define with the customer the Critical Success Factors that will make the project a success. Make
sure your Critical Success Factors are measurable, such as, a 20% reduction in the cost of raw
materials by the end of the year. Use these factors at the end of the project to measure your
success. This is all that counts and the 'must have' items that the project needs to deliver. All
other issues are secondary to these as the Critical Success Factors effectively form your contract
with the customer.

3. Planning
Time spent planning is time well spent. All projects must have a plan with enough detail so that
everyone involved knows where the project is going. A good plan provides the following
benefits:
 Clearly documented project milestones and deliverables.
 A valid and realistic timescale.
 Allows accurate cost estimates to be produced.
 Details resource requirements.
 Acts as an early warning system, providing visibility of task slippage.
 Keeps the project team focused and aware of progress.
To skimp on this area is likely to lead to problems. Ensure you build in contingency to any
estimate. I recommend between 10 and 15 percent. I prefer to be a little pessimistic and deliver
early; not optimistic and deliver late. Be careful though, add too much contingency and you
could be seen as inefficient.
4. Team Motivation
A motivated team will go the extra mile to deliver a project on time and to budget. Keep your
team motivated by involving them throughout the project and by planning frequent milestones to
help them feel they are making progress. Communication is key, so let your team know when
they are performing well, not just when they are performing badly.

5. Saying No!
Believe it or not, some project managers and some team members come to that, have a problem
saying no. Never promise anything you know you cannot deliver, you are just storing up
problems for later. Stick to your guns no matter how senior or important the person is, they'll
thank you for it later. If they don’t, perhaps you're in the wrong job. When saying no, be firm and
ready to justify the reasons behind your decision.

6. Avoiding Scope Creep

Scope creep is one of the most common reasons projects run over budget and deliver late. The
customer may forget the extra work and effort you have put in, insisting that you have delivered
what they asked for originally. Make sure you set expectations correctly at the outset of the
project and clearly define what is in and out of scope. Record it in the key project document.
Don't assume the customer will read and understand this document. I recommend that you spend
an hour with the customer to walk them through the project and make sure that they understand
and agree to the scope. Don't proceed without a firm agreement.

7. Risk Management
Nobody likes to think about risks, especially early in the project. Avoid risk management at your
peril. I suggest that you produce a risk log with an action plan to minimise each risk and then
publish it to all the key stakeholders in your project. Knowing what action you will take, should
the worst happen, will be a great comfort.

8. Project Closure
Remember that projects have a finite life. A project that isn't closed will continue to consume
resources. It is in the customer's interest to keep the project open so they can add new features
and functionality as they think of them. At the end of the project be firm, agree with the customer
that the Critical Success Factors have been met, the project delivered, tested, released and ask
them to sign the project off. I like to use a Customer Acceptance Form that I lodge with the
Project Office. At this point, you may like to ask your customer to fill out a satisfaction survey.
They may have valuable information that can help you and your team improve for future
projects.
Other frequent Factors for project success are as follows:

1. Clearly defined goals (including the general project philosophy or general mission of the
project, as well as commitment to those goals on the part of the team members).
2. Competent project manager. The importance of initial selection of skilled
(interpersonally, technically, and administratively) project leader.
3. Top Management Support. Top or divisional management support for the project that has
been conveyed to all concerned parties.
4. Competent project team members. The importance of selecting and, if necessary,
triaging project team members.
5. Sufficient resource allocation. These are Resources in the form of money, personnel,
logistics, etc.
6. Adequate communication channels. Sufficient information is available on the project
objectives, status, changes, organizational coordination, clients’ needs, etc.
7. Control Mechanisms. (Including planning, schedules, etc.). Programs are in place to deal
with initial plans and schedules.
8. Feedback capabilities. All parties concerned with the project area able to review project
status, make suggestions, and corrections through formal feedback channels or review meetings.
9. Responsiveness to client. All potential users of the project are consulted with and kept up
to date on project status. Further, clients receive assistance after the project has been
successfully implemented.
10. Client consultation. The project team members share solicited input from all potential
clients of the project. The project team members understand the needs of those who will use the
systems.
11. Technical tasks. The technology that is being implemented works well. Experts,
consultants, or other experienced project managers outside the project team have reviewed and
critiqued the basic approach.
12. Client Acceptance. Potential clients have been contacted about the usefulness of the
project. Adequate advanced preparation has been done to best determine how to sell the project
to the clients.
13. Trouble-shooting. Project team members spend a part of each day looking for problems that
have surfaced or are about to surface. Project team members are encouraged to take quick action
on problems on their own initiative. Following are some factors which can trouble shoot in order
to make project success:
1. Under budget
2. Ahead of schedule
3. Minimal change orders
4. Project achieves award
5. Stakeholder’s satisfied
6. Stakeholder’s financial performance met
7. Stakeholder’s timelines met
8. Stakeholder’s communications sufficient
9. Stakeholder’s communications on time
10. Stakeholder’s approvals given
11. Scope does not change
12. Deliverables are accepted
13. Deliverables are delivered on time
14. Quality of deliverables is acceptable
15. Quality standards are met
16. Product meets minimum performance or specification level
17. Quality control does not uncover quality problems
18. End user adopts the product
19. Schedule changes accepted by project sponsor
20. Schedule changes accepted by stakeholder(s)
21. Budget changes accepted by project sponsor
22. Budget changes accepted by stakeholder(s)
23. Project avoided unnecessary disruption to the business
24. Project avoided unwanted changes to the corporate culture
25. Project team works well together
26. Project team leaves the project better than they started it
27. Project team is motivated
28. Project team members are satisfied
 29. Project team achieves financial reward, bonus, etc.
30. Project team member achieves award
31. Vendors are under budget
32. Vendors deliver on time
33. Vendors achieve quality target
34. Vendors maintain relationship with stakeholder(s)
35. Vendors achieve repeat business
36. Certain major risks do not materialize
37. Certain major risks are successfully mitigated
38. Certain major risks are successfully transfered to a third party (warranties, etc.)
39. Certain major risks occur but are well managed

Conclusions
Applying these eight simple techniques will help you avoid common problems that befall many
project managers. The key to good project management is leadership and communication. Never
leave it too late to tell people what is happening, especially if it is bad. Bad news only gets worse
the longer you leave it.
Success is desired in everyday life, in business activities and in projects. Given the high rate of projects
that fail reaching their objectives or creating the wanted effects, researches that approach the topic of
success bring positive inputs both to literature and to practice. Relating literature reviews with studies that
capture the realities of business environments increase the usefulness of the results. Success factors
determine the positive outcomes of implementing projects. They have to be identified before projects’
implementation, from the conception phase. But projects environments are dynamic, so success factors
might change their level of infl uence in time. € us, a permanent monitoring of these factors is needed
and whenever necessary the project manager should infl uence certain factors in order to increase chances
of accomplishing success criteria.
FACTORS OF PROJECT FAILURE
Project failure can happen in any organization and to any project. There are an infinite number of
reasons for failure. Sometimes it’s out of the control of a project manager and/or the team
members. Sometimes failure is controllable. Failed projects and people involved with the failure
have some things in common. In both cases they are given prescriptions for “quick fixes” which
typically prove to be ineffective and can sometimes produce disastrous side effects.
Using a medical metaphor, flu’s are viral and are unresponsive to antibiotic drugs. For projects,
technology is the antibiotic often prescribed. Suggestions like, upgrade your software for
tracking the project, use the critical chain instead of the critical path, or use a Monte Carlo
simulation to compute the project risks. In many cases, these powerful interventions fail because
they are inappropriately applied.
The goal of project management is to produce a successful product or service. Often this goal is
hindered by the errors of omission as well as commission by management, project managers,
team members and others associated with the projects. The purpose of this paper is to enable the
identification of the common causes of project failures through the use of surveys and
questionnaires to provide information which can be used to mitigate their occurrence and in
many cases repair the damage caused and hopefully, recover the projects.
Projects most commonly fail because there is a lack of attention and efforts being applied to
seven project performance factors:
Focus on business value, not technical detail. This involves establishing a clear link between
the project and the organizations key strategic practices. The project plan needs to cover t he
planned delivery, the business change required and the means of benefits realization.
Establish clear accountability for measured results. There must be clear view of the
interdependencies between the projects, the benefits, and the criteria against which success will
be judged. It is necessary to establish a reasonably stable requirement baseline before any other
work goes forward. Requirements may still continue to creep. In virtually all projects there will
be some degree of “learning what the requirements really are” while building the project product.
Have consistent processes for managing unambiguous checkpoints. Successful large projects
typically have software measurement programs for capturing productivity and quality historical
data that can be sued to compare it against similar projects in order to judge the validity of
schedules, costs, quality, and other project related factors. The lack of effective quality centered
mechanisms can be a major contributor to both cost and schedule overruns.
Have a consistent methodology for planning and executing projects. There should be a
detailed plan developed before any release date of a project is announced. Inadequate planning is
one of the major reasons why projects spin out of control.
Include the customer at the beginning of the project and continually involve the customer
as things change so that the required adjustments can be made together. It has been
observed that successful projects occur when end users (customers) and the project members
work as teams in the same cubicle, although this is not always possible. Projects are less likely to
fail if there are informed customers giving meaningful input during every phase of requirements
elicitation, product description and implementation. The customer needs to be asking, “how are
the project result used over time and what do I get out of the results?
Manage and motivate people so that project efforts will experience a zone of optimal
performance throughout its life. This involves managing and retaining the most highly skilled
and productive people. Knowledge is money. A project team made up of higher paid people with
the right specialized skills is worth more per dollar than a group of lower cost people who need
weeks or months of training before they can start to be productive.
Provide the project team members the tools and techniques the need to produce
consistently successful projects. The project team must be skilled and experienced with clear
defined roles and responsibilities. If not, there must be access to expertise which can benefit
those fulfilling the requisite roles.

These are the most frequent causes of project failure:

1. Mismatch between the project and organisation’s strategic priorities.

2. No pre-agreed measures of project success.
3. Ill-defined senior management ownership and leadership.
4. Ineffective engagement with stakeholders.
5. Poor project management technical skills.
6. Non-standard approach to project management and risk management.
7. Inability to differentiate stages of project development and implementation.
8. Proposal evaluation focused on price rather than long-term value for money and
achievement of business benefits.
9. Lack of contact with senior management levels in the organization.
10. Poor project team integration between clients, the supplier team and supply chain.
11. Poorly defined project scope
12. Inadequate risk management
13. Failure to identify key assumptions
14. Project managers who lack experience and training
15. No use of formal methods and strategies
16. Lack of effective communication at all levels
 17. Key staff leaving the project and/or company
18. Poor management of expectations
19. Ineffective leadership
20. Lack of detailed documentation
21. Failure to track requirements
22. Failure to track progress
23. Lack of detail in the project plans
24. Inaccurate time and effort estimates
25. Cultural differences in global projects.

MAIN CAUSES OF PROJECT FAILURE

1. Poor Preparation
You need to have a clear picture of what you’re going to do, in advance – as much as
possible. Otherwise, you may find yourself up stream without a paddle. You need to know
what project success looks like at the beginning and don’t loose focus of it. Hence, if you
don’t have a clear focus at the at the earliest stage of the process, you are making things
harder on yourself. Have a meeting, even if it is lengthy, with stakeholders to discuss their
expectations on cost, time and product quality. Know how you will execute your tasks in
order to meet everyone’s expectations.

2. Inadequate Documentation and Tracking

This is the responsibility of the project manager. Tracking milestones is how you are going to
know whether you are meeting expectations. Proper recording and monitoring lets the PM
identify where more resources are needed to complete a project on time.

3. Bad Leadership
When we see this word, leader, we usually think, the project manager. However, the
people at each management-level have a responsible to ensure that the project is successful.
Management should not micromanage but provide support to ensure that the PM can follow
through with the expectations placed upon them.
4. Failure to Define Parameters and Enforce Them
When you’re a leader, PM, it’s imperative that you’re able to work well with your team. If
and when tasks or goals are not met to standard, there should be ramifications. Rank tasks by
priority and assign them to the most proficient individual.

5. Inexperienced Project Managers

A project manager has a lot of responsibility. You need to assign people to management roles
who have matching education and experience. In some cases, and perhaps more often than
not, inexperienced managers are given projects. They may be very capable of managing
projects, but the key is to keep them at a level where they can succeed. Otherwise, you will
set them up for failure. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with a challenge, just don’t
make it beyond their reach.

6. Inaccurate Cost Estimations

There may be times when your cost estimates are completely off. As you know, when
resources run-out, the project stops. Prevent this by identifying the lack of resources early on.

7. Little Communication at Every Level of Management

Whether it’s between upper management, middle or with the team, it’s disastrous to have
poor communication. Everyone should feel free to come forward to express their concern or
give suggestions. When everyone is on the same page and there’s transparency, workflow is
at an optimum level.

8. Culture or Ethical Misalignment

Company culture must be comprised of competence, pro-activeness, and professionalism. If
it isn’t, team members will not be motivated to do their best. Basically, everyone involved
must be invested in their part of the project to successfully complete it.

9. Competing Priorities
When there’re not enough resources, there’s bound to be competition between personnel
resources and funding. Having good cost estimations at the start will eliminate this problem.

10.Disregarding Project Warning Signs

When a project is on the verge of failing, there will have always been warning signs. Taking
action immediately can save the project. Otherwise, the whole endeavor goes down the drain.
CONCLUTION:
Of the ten reasons for failure raised above, only one is the result of insufficient technical
knowledge. The rest relate to more fundamental issues within the organization. Some are
cultural or structural, but all serve as indicators of low project management maturity at the
organizational level. In many instances, organizations that are failing have highly competent
project managers, whose abilities far outstrip the capabilities of the organizations that they
work for in terms of project management maturity.

This scenario is inevitably damaging for an organization and means that they cannot realize
the holistic benefits they might otherwise from project management activities. For instance, if
cost management or data collection processes cannot be standardized, how can project
performance be accurately measured across a portfolio? Longer term, situations like this
usually mean that failure rates for projects increase as their complexity grows and it becomes
impossible to measure project management effectiveness across a growing organization. It
means that they cannot easily replicate successes and that’s a major reason why industry
research points to high project failure rates.