5 Reasons

Projects Fail
How To Ensure Your Team Is Set Up For Success

A Guide to Project Management

Only 2.5% of companies
successfully complete
100% of their projects.*
* PwC. Project Management: Improving performance, reducing risk

This stat might be troubling, but there’s a silver

lining. You can be in the top 3% of best-performing
companies simply by completing most, if not all, of
your projects.

With so many moving pieces, it can be hard to see

the warning signs building up that eventually lead
your project towards failure.

This eBook breaks down five factors that can

cause projects to fail and what you can do to
avoid them.
1 Unclear Project
Objectives
37% of projects businesses undertake fail due
to unclear project objectives and milestones.
-Pulse of the Professional Annual Report (PMI)

A lack of direction and unclear goals are some of the biggest

reasons projects fail. Businesses who fail to plan for projects
don’t just waste employee efforts and time—they also waste
money. Approximately 10% of every dollar a business spends
is wasted as a result of poor project management efforts.

In work environments where company targets and goals are

in constant flux, clearly defined project objectives help bring
calm to the chaos and radically increase the odds of success.

So how do you get started? Here are some guidelines

to effectively defining and communicating objectives:

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Understand the difference between goals
and objectives
Think of a goal as the outcome you’re working toward, while an
objective is a step you take to reach that goal. Objectives are
equally imperative to project success, especially in companies
with shifting priorities. Here are some key reasons why:

They de-stress your team and increase productivity. Being

overwhelmed by the larger view of a project is why many people
procrastinate. But when they can see the project in actionable
chunks, there is a greater sense of control. And it’s easier to focus
on the next step in front of them.

When grouped together in project phases, objectives allow for

natural review periods. At the completion of each phase, you
can review the project to make sure it’s on-track with initial project
goals, scope, budget, etc. With many built-in phases for review,
there are plenty of opportunities for course correction before a
project gets too far along.

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Establish clear deadlines and roles
A Gallup report found only 33% of people know what is expected
of them from their jobs. This lack of clarity is a major contributor
to project struggles and failure.

The solution to this problem is to define roles and responsibilities

and assign clear objectives to specific team members

Identify what tools will be used for data

management and collaboration.
Where do you want your data to live? What platforms will be
used and who will have access to them? It’s vital that you know
where all your project information exists, and who has control
of it or access to it.

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2 Poor Progress
Tracking &
Management
Only 23% of organizations use standardized
project management practices across the
entire organization.
- Project Management Institute (PMI)

Effective project management tracking comes down to staying organized.

It’s easy to get lost in data overload. A comprehensive look at the problem
of lost information by Xenit, a Belgian-based IT company, noted that
“[In 2012], McKinsey reported that ‘employees spend 1.8 hours every day—
9.3 hours per week, on average—searching and gathering information.’”

Six years later, a review revealed the issue had not improved: A study
by Nintex showed that 49% of 1,000 employees surveyed said they
struggled to locate documents related to their work, and 43% also
struggled with issues of document sharing and document approval
requests.

While successful project management should efficiently track changes

to keep everyone on your team accountable, project tracking is more
than established checkpoints and milestones—it’s creating a system
for monitoring completed tasks, reporting truthfully on whether or not
they were successfully completed, and what, if any, problems were
encountered.

With a good tracking system in place, it’s nearly impossible for unfinished
tasks or missed deadlines to slip through the cracks unnoticed.

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Here are some specific ways of measuring progress:

1 “Earned Value” management: This technique monitors

progress by comparing how much time and budget should
have been spent versus the amount of actual work done
to date.

2 Milestones: Milestones can be any significant checkpoint or

phase (task, event, decision, etc.) in the project lifecycle.

3 Status reports: Regular status reports help managers monitor

progress. They track whether the project’s initial goals can still
be met after a certain period of time, or if adjustments need to
be made as a result of changing circumstances. They also help
to monitor team performance and enable managers to quickly
step in when a problem arises.

4 Data integration with software: As projects grow in size and

complexity, tracking the progress of potentially hundreds of
stakeholders can be cumbersome. Good project management
software helps automate everything from project tracking
to request approvals. It can also notify stakeholders when
changes occur and provide teams with real-time status
updates and analytics.

Scope creep
A 2017 PMI report found that nearly 50% of business projects
experience scope creep. Management, clients, or even vendors are
known to add requirements to a project after it is already underway.
But with a proper tracking system, you can tell which add-ons are
realistic and which ones require additional time or budget.
3 Weak Communication
Ineffective communication is the primary contributor to
project failure one third of the time, and had a negative
impact on project success more than half the time.
- Project Management Institute (PMI)

Good communication is more than timeliness and tone—it’s

about where it’s happening. There are a myriad of ways team
members communicate with each other—email, text, Slack,
Zoom, Skype, phone calls, in-person, etc. A mix of these
communication tools is typically used, depending on urgency
or importance. The problem with that is when one of those
communications needs to be recalled to successfully complete
a project. How can a project succeed when an important
conversation was held over a private Slack channel, but the
information related to it is shared via an email chain?

Conversations that happen over multiple channels are nearly

impossible to track. This leads to delays in data sharing,
missed points for collaboration, loss of accountability, and a Overall, 39% of employees felt
lack of understanding for the challenges others are facing. their organization suffered from
Repeat conversations are another challenge—someone not broken document management
processes.
privy to an earlier conversation between two people sends -Definitive Guide to America’s Most
an email asking their colleagues the same question that was Broken Processes, Nintex
answered somewhere else.
Software automation tools can
solve this by keeping all your
documents in one centralized
location that’s easily searchable
and attached to a specific
checkpoint or milestone.

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What’s a team to do?

For teams facing an office environment with multiple channels,

there are a few actions that can help minimize miscommunication:

1 Get overly organized

Organize all your interactions—agendas, meeting minutes,

and action items are all incredibly valuable and should
be highly documented. Decide what information will be
tracked, who is in charge of tracking it, how it will be
tracked and where it will be stored. This information should
be available to everyone at all times.

Providing access to in-progress conversations helps

team members stay on track while also avoiding repeat
conversations or having to ask where needed information
can be found.

2 Get ahead of assumptions or miscommunication

Remove assumptions by communicating project objectives

early on. For a project to succeed, you need to make sure
management, the team, and stakeholders all agree on a
definition of success from the very beginning.

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3 Map out a chain for reporting

Create a reporting system that team members can use to

update stakeholders and management on project progress.
Avoid surprises by developing a system that creates
accountability every step of the way.

Establishing rules for project collaboration and discussion

helps improve communication and set expectations for
everyone on the team. It also establishes data management
and collaboration habits that reduce future conflict and
confusion.

4 Identify how communication channels should be used

Ideally, you can streamline your communication channels into

one centralized platform so you don’t have to spend time
searching for specific conversations across platforms. But that
often takes time.

In the meantime, create clear policies for your

communication channels about what gets shared where.
Conversations about a project provide context that can be just
as valuable as the data itself, so creating intentional spaces for
discussion is key.

5 More access is better for everyone

From more information comes better decisions. That’s true

for your team, your department or your company. Complex
projects often require collaboration and extensive team
involvement to be successful. So it’s important to eliminate
communication silos and make channels and conversations
accessible to all relevant individuals.

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4 Lack of
Accountability
Only 33% of people know what is expected of them
from their jobs.
- Gallup report

Unclear expectations and roles are another project killer.

Accountability starts with clearly defining project objectives
and ensuring team members know their roles and
responsibilities.

And as scope and roles change, it’s crucial to continue

addressing accountability throughout the project.

Here are some accountability concepts that can determine the

success of your projects:

Responsibility vs. Accountability

These terms are often mistaken for meaning the same thing—
they don’t. Knowing the difference between them can be the
difference between a successful project and a failed one.

A responsible team member is defined as an individual

assigned a task. Responsibility can be shared. An accountable
team member is ultimately answerable for the activity
or decision.
Only one accountable person can be assigned to an action.
Those responsible for a task are often not the same ones
accountable for the success of those tasks.

Project managers must make sure to not only define

responsibilities but also understand the structure of
accountability within the project. Always ask upfront, “Is there
someone accountable for this project task?” If the answer is no,
then the project manager is the accountable person until they
fill that gap.

To keep teams accountable and build a culture of continuous

improvement, it’s important to:

• Be clear on tasks and who they’re assigned to

• Have regular check-ins to assess progress
and performance
• Acknowledge successes
• Identify areas that could use improvement

Set Expectations
Communication is an important aspect of creating
accountability with your team. That starts with setting and
managing expectations for all involved, from individual
contributors to managers. It is vital that expectation
are managed so that there are few mismatches or
misunderstandings regarding responsibilities or how
performance of those responsibilities will be measured.

For the sake of accountability, always ensure specific tasks

have a proper owner who will report on the status of that task
going forward. Without agreement on who the owner is, the
project will be set up so that the team is responsible, but no
one is accountable should something go wrong.

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5 Unreliable Estimates
While cost estimates are tedious and typically filled with uncertainty,
they are vital to a project’s success. Unreliable estimates, whether
for cost, scope or time, are among the largest reasons why projects
don’t deliver on their objectives.

When projects go way over estimate, it’s not only frustrating for
stakeholders and project managers, it can harm a company’s
credibility. And in some cases, it creates a sense of distrust among
management and project leaders.

The first step for successful cost estimating is finding the right
person to take on the responsibility. Experience matters, as less
experienced planners tend to be overly optimistic while more
experienced managers will build in the necessary buffer for when
something inevitably goes wrong.

Project managers typically follow one of a few tried and true methods
to create estimates that are as reliable as possible.

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Here are three common methods used:

1 Parametric Estimation
This is one of simplest methods that estimates projects on a
quantitative basis, such as dollars per square foot. But because
not everything can be easily quantified, there can be gaping holes
in the estimate.

Analogous Estimation
2 Often used early on when not much is known about a project, this
method relies on historical information of past projects. Using time
or cost estimates from previous projects is a quick and relatively
easy method though not always the most accurate.

3 Bottom-up Estimation
The most accurate but most time-consuming method.
It requires breaking down each project task into smaller
components, such as individual deliverables. The The most accurate estimates:
estimates for these smaller chunks, often created by When calculating cost and time
various team members, are combined to create the estimates for a deliverable, a
three-point estimation formula
estimate for the entire project.
where each team member
provides their pessimistic,
optimistic and best-guess
estimates will help achieve the
most accurate results.

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Kintone. One solution
to get work flowing.
Make sure your projects are set up for success
by using Kintone to help with your project
management. Keep everyone on the same page
with our centralized workplace platform—easily
assign tasks, automate workflows, and bring
together all your data and team communications.

With Kintone, it’s almost impossible for anything

to fall through the cracks.

Learn How

Video Tutorials:
Watch our tutorial videos on YouTube
to learn more about Kintone:
www.youtube.com/user/kintoneglobal

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 www.kintone.com
DISCLAIMER: The information contained herein is, to the best
of our knowledge and belief, accurate and current as of its publication.