Avoid Project Failure: 5 Top Tips

No one wants their project to fail. Despite this, project failure is all too common.

When you start projects, you are often filled with optimism, and can barely recognize the possibility of failure. And the risk of project failure gets worse once you have a plan.

That plan gives you tunnel vision. It becomes almost impossible to conceive of events not following that plan. Where you see the possibility of divergence, it’s typically small glitches and minor problems.
So, when project failure comes – and it surely does on many projects – it usually comes as a complete surprise.

This is odd. Because, with the benefit of hindsight, the causes of project failure were often entirely predictable.

So, in this video, I want to highlight five ways to avoid project failure. These tips go beyond project risk management to dig into the causes of project failure and how to avoid them.

I have taken them from my Kindle-exclusive eBook: 'How to Avoid Project Failure: Project failure is all too common. What are the reasons for it, and how can you stop them?' (https://geni.us/AMHk) It costs around US$2.99 or the local equivalent.

This book is about predicting project failure and, therefore, being prepared to prevent it. In it, we cover 60 reasons for project failure, within the 10 Key Points of Project Failure:
1. Project Definition (4)
2. Governance (10)
3. Planning (5)
4. Politics (3)
5. Stakeholder Engagement (5)
6. Resources (5)
7. Project Management (13)
8. Testing and Quality (7)
9. Implementation (4)
10. External Factors (4)