Why projects fail

I have been on a few failed projects and a few successful projects. A project fails because of many reasons. The reason for this post is because I have been letting this blog slide and I hope to be more regular. Also there is an excellent presentation by the people at Head First. I loved the line "Don't go in the basement" as it happens in horror movies. Seriously, people still do go to the basement. These guys have a nice sense of humor.

If any of the projects that you worked on has not failed, stop right now and leave. There is no reason to spoil a good thing.

The four ways that the presentation mentions is

• Things the boss does
• Things the software does (or doesn’t do)
• Things the team should’ve done
• Things that could have been caught

According to me there are a couple more

• The project did not get enough support or did not get the right team - there are times that a project is created because the boss makes a bad call, and that is mentioned in the first reason, but my explanation is, sometimes a project is designed because of market pressure or "We gotta do something". Lackluster support is given, company weight is not put behind product and sales and marketing is flat. This is one where there is an A-Rod and a Jeter but the rest of the team is not that good or on the same page. The whole team (those involved) has to be behind the project 100%
  
• Project Attrition - Many key members leave the project. This is self explanatory.

What can you do? Review, check, recheck, gut check, progress check, status check, mood check, attitude check. Watch people in the team, there will be signals and notice if the level of communication steadily tapers off, this is a warning sign.