Why Projects Really Fail

I decided I would submit a paper for the PMI Netherlands Summit and I've also sent them the outline of the proposed talk, titled: Why Projects Really Fail (and what we need to do about it). I've decided that if they don't want to include it I will publish it as an article anyhow. If they do decide to include it I will wait until after the event to publish it.

In the meantime I will introduce the topic on this blog and see what sort of feedback I get. So here are my starting thoughts:

Why Projects Really Fail (and what we need to do about it)
I believe that everyone in the project management community agrees that far too many projects go wrong. There have been many surveys into the reasons for project failure over the years and their findings are usually consistent so it would seem that we also think we know why projects fail and have done for some time. But despite this projects still keep going wrong, so why do we keep on making the same mistakes? 

Bonfire Night

Topsham Rugby Club have one of, if not the finest bonfire nights and firework displays in the South West of England and this year I volunteered to help. It was all fairly hectic on the night and we held a wash up meeting on Wednesday to review it. Just like a post project review and there were a lot of interesting learnings from it but I want to pick just one:

In previous years I understand it was run on a fairly dictatorial manner with one person pulling all the strings. This year we just trusted the team to get on with things and lo and behold it worked! So the way is once again vindicated!

I'm really looking forward to next year as I'll be able to get more actively involved in the planning. All the best for now.