Project Management Methods - Essay Example

Project Management has developed into a major area of study. One of the major reasons is the fact that there are numerous factors that are not fully understood in project management. Every project needs three resources: Man, Material and Money. Managing men, material and money might be the easiest thing to do when compared to the software projects or IT projects. What makes IT projects different is the fact that it is mostly virtual and almost uniformly not realized in any physical form until the final moment.

The lack of understanding of the expectations of the end user is just one of the bottlenecks. The very fact that every end user has his or her own perception of the requirements makes the IT project a far tougher proposition than what it was conceived to be. Surveys conducted by Robbins – Gioia (2001) concluded that nearly 51% of all software projects fail. They also said that nearly 46% of the companies just did not know where they are going with the IT projects. Most of the projects go over board on cost as well as on time (Brenda Whittaker 1999).

Worse still is the fact that most of the companies are not able to identify what is a success and what is a failure. At the same time, Standish Group released a report that compared the performance of IT projects all through the last decade. From 1994 to 2005, the Group indicated that the IT projects have improved in their performance and have been consistently producing better results. The graph below from the Standish Group's CHAOS report (2004) indicates that the success rate has been increasing gradually.

Though this is cause for commendation, still majority of the projects, over 71% of the projects, still fail or do not satisfy the customers who are paying for it. This paper studies the numerous causes for the failures. The paper also studies the various methods adopted by the people to forestall failures and how these methods have failed if they have. Also analyzed are the success reasons for some of the projects. Why do some projects succeed And what makes such projects better than the rest of the projects The results of such study are looked at in this paper. 4. Aims and Objectives In order to put in the right perspective the discussions, the following aims and objectives have been set for this project.

The aim of the project is to identify why software and IT projects fail and why their failure rates are higher. This will ensure that real issues behind the failures are identified and listed. Once this is done, the objective is easily reachable. The objective is to find the right project management method and the right process that a software development company should adopt so that the failure rate of their project is low. This objective can be met once the problem points are clearly identified. 5. Literature Review 5.

1 Introduction The literature review of the project failure would aim at studying the various methods that are available. While doing so, the primary evolutionary path of these project management methods was identified. This would also ensure that the reasons behind such a methodology will also be known. Every development