Significant causes of Project Failure

This article discusses the three significant causes of project failure, namely communication, planning and estimation, and socio-cultural factors. It highlights the importance of effective communication, realistic planning, and cultural compatibility in ensuring project success. The article cites examples of project failures due to poor communication, inadequate planning, and cultural incompatibility.

Running head: CAUSES OF PROJECT FAILURE
Significant causes of Project Failure
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CAUSES OF PROJECT FAILURE
Projects are often threatened by risks and uncertainties because no two projects are identical.
Even if the project is repeated, it will be on a different time with more than one point of view.
As a result, each necessary step in project can lead to analysis of specific and sophisticated
elements that can correspond to significant causes towards its failure. Here, three significant
causes of project failure are communication, planning and estimation and socio cultural
factors.
Effective communication is important in an environment where project is carried out
between stakeholders. There should be proper external and internal communication between
staff and project manager. If there is some lack in this factor, the project’s success can take a
longer time than necessary or can lead to not happening of success at all. Language barrier in
communication supposedly in IT field can be technical for understanding and conveying the
same to the customer (Ramos and Mota 2014). This type of dysfunction interrupts the way
for the message to be completed. Moreover, the other two areas in communication that can be
of serious issue are lack of effective team work and responsive decision making which are
indirectly related. As per Damoah (2015), communication is the “panacea” to project success,
a good corporate strategy through communication can be turned to a modern day Tower of
Babel depicting that a confusion among stakeholders is bound to fail the project. The study of
Ochieng and Price (2010) further draws the attention on the generalisability that the clear
lines of processes and responsibility can resolve the project team members’ disputes or issues
or can leave the problems to escalate and further causing a failure.
Planning on an initial phase whether it is project baselines, constraints or estimates to costs
are liable to project failure (Damoah and Akwei 2017). The estimation factor leads to
schedule and cost estimates that becomes valuable during the progress of the project.
Moreover, if the estimation and baselines are unrealistic then it can further lead to inadequate
funding and would divert from prioritizing operational activities or objectives ultimately

CAUSES OF PROJECT FAILURE
paving the path for project failure (Nicholas and Steyn 2017). For example British Petroleum
faced project failure due to poor planning as it took an abrupt decision and the development
was not divided into phases or steps and lack prioritization (Abbasi et al. 2014).
Cultural and social settings are incompatible with Western management concepts as it does
not possesses cross cultural validity because every country has specific management practices
which when not followed contribute to failure of the project (Damoah 2015). In this case, if
developing countries is taken as an example then the countries lack design and usage leading
to strained project performance and incompatibility. As per Tanner and von Willingh (2014),
the study was conducted from Project Management Offices in South Africa where rigidity
and inflexibility was found among the employees on a traditional culture basis for agile
software projects. Moreover, with an uncooperative cultural environment lead to
organizational resistance to change because of extremely political and traditional
environment.

CAUSES OF PROJECT FAILURE
References
Abbasi, N., Wajid, I., Iqbal, Z. and Zafar, F., 2014. Project failure case studies and
suggestion. International Journal of Computer Applications, 86(6).
Damoah, I.S. and Akwei, C., 2017. Government project failure in Ghana: a multidimensional
approach. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 10(1), pp.32-59.
Damoah, I.S., 2015. An investigation into the causes and effects of project failure in
government projects in developing countries: Ghana as a case study (Doctoral dissertation,
Liverpool John Moores University).
Nicholas, J.M. and Steyn, H., 2017. Project management for engineering, business and
technology. Routledge.
Ochieng, E.G. and Price, A.D.F., 2010. Managing cross-cultural communication in
multicultural construction project teams: The case of Kenya and UK. International Journal of
Project Management, 28(5), pp.449-460.
Ramos, P. and Mota, C., 2014. Perceptions of success and failure factors in information
technology projects: a study from Brazilian companies. Procedia-Social and Behavioral
Sciences, 119, pp.349-357.
Tanner, M. and von Willingh, U., 2014. Factors leading to the succ ess and failure of agile
projects implemented in traditionally waterfall environments. Human Capital without
Borders: Knowledge and Learning for the Quality of Life. Portoroz, Slovenia: Make Learn.