Typical IT Project Management Pitfalls

The survey by Standish group revealed that only 29% of IT projects achieved success over the last 20 years. Experienced project managers, Project organisation and researchers have attempted to trap the essence of what is behind these failures and have found the factors discussed below with the impact of each factor:

Lack of the right resources with the right skills
Any project however good planned is doomed to fail without right resources with the right skills. Researchers have found this factor the cause of most of the project failures still this is the most common mistake that most organisations make. "All the planning in the world won't overcome an insufficiency of talent" says Joel Koppelman, CEO of project management software vendor Primavera.

Lack of experienced project manager
This factor may bring the project in a zone where it is almost impossible to take it in control. Once in this zone, even the best project manager may feel difficulties. The solution to this problem is to hire the competent project manager.

Not following a standard, repeatable project management process
Lack of methodology increases the risk of falling of tasks related to the project through the cracks. This also increases the risk of reworking and thus meeting the deadlines in terms of time and costs.

IT gets hamstrung by too much process
When there are too much of processes to be followed by team, the teams become inflexible and their inflexibility frustrates stakeholders, which leads to communication gaps and further delays in the project completions.

Poor definition of the scope and not tracking changes to the scope of the project
If a project's scope isn't well-defined by the business and IT up front and When the changes to the scope are not tracked through organised structure and changes are incorporated without any analysed, the project keeps on growing in every aspect i.e. complexity, cost, time line etc. and ultimately reaches the stage of its fall before the completion.

Lack of up-to-date data about the status of projects
Anything that cannot be measured cannot be managed. For managing anything, we need to know the status of process i.e. whether it is in control or moving out of its ranges and only measurement can provide this information.

Lack of analysis of dependencies between projects
There are often dependencies on other projects going on at the same time. When project managers fail to see the dependencies between projects-such as staff assigned to one project are needed on another, projects get held up. Such slowdowns can have a ripple effect on all projects.

Unreasonable deadlines
IT sets itself up to fail and gets a reputation for not being able to deliver projects on time. We have seen this in the case discussed in class that how Mike, the project manager tried to accommodate the project deadlines set by the Board members. But tampering with dependencies and the plan only creates even more problems thus delivering the project on time even more difficult

Incomplete Project Schedules
The factor creates the chaos in the whole process of project execution. Team members don't know what is due when, which makes completing the project on time a challenge.
Lack of Communication with project sponsors and stakeholders:
This factor creates a kind of misunderstanding about the deliverables and ultimately leads to the failure of project. A project is considered successful if it meets the requirements of the stakeholders and end users.

References: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/Home/News.asp?id=49310