Why do we suffer so many project failures? Why do so many projects lead to disappointing results? And what can be done to improve project strategy so that we can achieve better outcomes?
While there are certainly many ways to improve project outcomes, one that is often overlooked is to use the lessons learned from project failures to help improve the project strategy and project management process.
Project Failures
The conventional approach to studying project management emphasizes how a project “should be” managed. But projects often don’t unfold as they should. Indeed, almost all projects experience one or more messy and complex situations over their life-cycle. Some project managers handle these situations quite well, but others are thrown off-track by unrealistic business objectives, budget and time constraints, uncooperative suppliers, customers who can’t be satisfied, and unreasonable political pressures. Studying these project failures … focusing on what was actually done and why it didn’t work… can help us improve our performance. By studying project failures we can develop more realistic project strategies.
Project Success
But we can also learn by studying project management successes. We can learn how others developed the components of an effective project strategy. How they have established high-performance project cultures. How they have responded to the messy and complex situations that all projects eventually encounter. How they have maintained effective communications among all stakeholders, and how they have steadfastly maintained a focus on business objectives.
Case Studies and Lessons Learned
This site provides you with the opportunity to explore short cases of project failures and successes. Some of the cases, and the problems they illustrate, will no doubt sound familiar. Others may be new. Yet, they all tell a story of how a limited set of systematic biases and errors are made over and over again. Familiarity with them and awareness of how they were addressed in other organizations can help you anticipate what can go wrong, improve your diagnostic skills and help you develop the critical management skills necessary to improve project performance.
This site goes beyond project failures and successes. It summarizes these lessons in sections called lessons learned and project tips. You will also find sections on project turnarounds and fast track projects. In the section on project turnarounds you will learn why looking for and acting upon early warning signs is so difficult. In the section on fast track-projects, an increasingly important project management issue in our globally competitive marketplace, you can explore the issues that justify granting a project fast track status.
Global Project Strategy
Global Project Strategy is an organization that works together with top-management, project managers, and the project management office to improve project outcomes. Please call if you are interested in talking to us about how we may help your project teams improve their project outcomes.
