Top 5 Reasons Projects Fail

We all know that more projects fail then succeed. There are studies by educational institutions, research organizations, etc. that support this same reality.  The dollar store mentality of cheap and fast is used to often.  Executives that don't hold people accountable for anything but customer satisfaction while ignoring schedule, budget, and quality often will fail in the end.

There are many reasons why projects fail. Expectations or communications management are common reasons but not the only ones. Ultimately their are many reasons why projects fail and its a miracle that many projects are successful at all.

Perhaps the most probable way to succeed on a project is to have knowledge of what can go wrong.   Knowledge of what can go wrong is one very important tool.  Perhaps by understanding the causes of failure we can avoid pitfalls when they appear "unexpectedly."  This post is to introduce my list of perspective reasons of why projects fail which I will discuss in detail in future posts.

1. Inadequately trained and/or inexperienced project managers
2. Failure to set and manage expectations
3. Poor leadership at any and all levels
4. Failure to adequately identify, document and track requirements
5. Poor effort estimation