Why Project Management Methods Can Lead to Failure - Research Paper Example

Most of the project management failures seem to be occurring due to client requirements understanding as our study reveals. This research works on the existing literature and tries to identify the various reasons behind the failure of IS projects. The methodologies adopted by the teams for project execution leads to a number of issues during the course of the project. This has been analyzed and a survey conducted to identify the major causes of project failures.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 overboard 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.