Project Management Practices: The Criteria For Success or Failure
Project Management Practices: The Criteria For Success or Failure
Table 1: Project success factors an added benefit is that project managers are
Project Success Factors % of better prepared to articulate the needs and
Responses priorities of the next phase of the project.
User Involvement 15.9% iv. Proper planning
Executive Management Support 13.9% This is one of the keys to a successful project.
Clear Statement of Requirements 13.0% Creating a project plan is the first thing to do
Proper Planning 9.6% when undertaking any kind of project.
Realistic Expectations 8.2%
Smaller Project Milestones 7.7% An analysis of the CHAOS report over the last eight
Competent Staff 7.2% years as shown in Table 2, shows a steady
Ownership 5.3% improvement in project success based on the
measures of “on budget, on cost, and to specification”
Clear Vision and Objectives 2.9%
[4]. Failures have also reduced significantly
Hard-Working, Focused Staff 2.4%
considering the number of projects that has almost
Other 13.9%
doubled in the eight years of research. However,
almost half of the projects remain “challenged.”
The top four factors that contributed to project
According to the Standish report, these projects are
success are user involvement, executive management
over budget, over time or under specification [4].
support, clear statement of requirements and proper
planning are briefly discussed below. Table 2: CHAOS Report findings
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002
i. User involvement
Succeeded 16% 27% 26% 28% 34%
The absence of user involvement is the major
Challenged 53% 33% 46% 49% 51%
cause of project failure. Even when delivered on
time and on budget, a project can fail if it does not Failed 31% 40% 28% 23% 15%
meet users’ needs.
ii. Executive management support 4. Issues contributing to project management
This influences the process and progress of a success
project and lack of executive input can put a Research shows that when one or more projects were
project at a severe disadvantage. started, some important issues need to be considered
iii. Clear statement of requirements to achieve project success [5, 6, 7]. Some of these
This refers to the base level requirements. By issues and the activities involved that managers must
creating a minimal, obtainable base level of give serious attention to are shown
requirements and then developing those features, in Table 3 [5].
the effect of change will be reduced. As a result,
Table 3: Issues of project management success
Issues Description Activities
Project focus Time, budget and quality. Focused on achieving these broad goals.
Planning Engage in planning – detailed and systematic. Planning and replanning.
Sense of urgency Limited time, money, and other resources. Regular status checks, meetings, and reminders
are essential.
Use a time-tested, proven project life Use standard models to build into project plans. Identify the best project life cycle.
cycle
Visualised and communicated in Avoid vague descriptions. Focused in the same direction.
vivid detail
Evolve gradually to succeed Involvement of users in cost and time estimation and risk Maintain a controlled evolution.
management.
Clear approvals and sign-off by Clear approval points. Examine and approve.
sponsors
Fight for time to do things right Do it right the first time. Demonstration and why it is necessary?
Matched by equivalent authority Project outcomes. Acquire and coordinate resources, request.
Project sponsors and stakeholders Most project sponsors and stakeholders rightfully demand Helping to define deliverables.
must be active participants, not the authority to approve project deliverables, either wholly Keeping the project moving.
passive customers or in part.
Acquire the best people Get the most skilled, experienced and best qualified. Identify the right team members.
Actively set priorities Strategies, establishes criteria. Choose the right leader to prevent multi-project
log jams.
project undertaken by students can provide some on their own preference. The details of the team
insight to project success and failure. projects and the formation of the project teams are
described in the following section.
6. Case study on student projects
A case study was conducted on a group of 6.1 Project details and team structure
undergraduate computer science students from the In this case study, three project titles were proposed
Faculty of Computer Science and Information by the course lecturer. Table 6 presents a brief
Technology, University of Malaya, who took the description of the projects undertaken by these
course WKES2202: Project Management. Forty-nine students. Each team consisted of 6-8 members
students are from the Department of Software comprising Chinese, Malay and/or Indian students.
Engineering and only one student is from the
Department of Information Science. The students
were assigned a team project which was chosen based
Table 7: Rating given by the team leaders failed to develop a system that fulfilled the
Team No. customer’s requirements.
Question No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 4.0 On the other hand, analysis on project schedule
2 5.0 4.0 4.0 4.7 4.2 4.6 3.0 shows that five projects were completed on time.
3 5.0 4.0 5.0 3.0 5.0 4.0 4.0 This success could possibly be due to the fact that all
4 4.2 4.6 4.8 5.0 5.0 4.5 5.0 the five teams were able to prepare a good project
5 4.3 4.5 5.0 5.0 5.0 4.3 4.0 plan except for teams 4 and 7. These two teams were
6 5.0 5.0 3.7 4.0 4.7 4.0 3.0 not able to deliver on time, because the project
7 5.0 5.0 4.0 3.7 5.0 4.7 5.0 required team members with sound technical
8 4.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 5.0 3.0 4.0 knowledge to develop the system. As these two teams
only have one or two members who are good in
Table 8 shows the average rating given by the team programming and have mastered the development
members on the eight questions. The average rating is tools, they could not complete the system
calculated by adding the score given by each member development on schedule.
and then dividing the total score by the total number
of team members in each team (excluding the team Analysis on budget shows that only one team
leader). managed to complete their project within budget and
the remaining six teams were over budget. Team 1
Table 8: Rating given by the team members was able to estimate the cost quite accurately as the
Team No. team members referred to the documentation of a
Question No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 similar project carried out in the previous year. This
1 5.0 4.0 5.0 4.5 4.5 4.0 4.2 shows that project documentation could provide good
2 5.0 4.7 4.5 4.0 5.0 5.0 4.0 guidance to project teams and be able to avoid any
3 4.0 5.0 5.0 4.0 4.8 3.0 4.0 mistakes made in the past. For teams 2 and 3, the
4 5.0 4.0 4.0 4.3 4.4 4.0 4.0 over budget was caused by imposing a smaller fee on
5 4.0 5.0 4.3 4.3 4.8 4.8 5.0 each Malaysian Sign Language workshop participant
6 4.5 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 than the actual fee. The purpose was to attract more
7 5.0 4.0 4.4 4.5 4.8 4.0 3.0 participants to attend the workshop as too high a fee
8 4.0 4.0 4.0 5.0 4.8 4.0 4.0 could result in low participation rate, and thus,
resulting in project failure. For teams 4, 5, 6 and 7, as
6.4 Course lecturer’s assessment on the student the project size is considerably large, and the team
projects members were inexperience in making good cost
Before making inferences on the feedback given by estimation, all teams failed to estimate the cost
the students, the assessments on the projects were correctly.
obtained from the course lecturer. The assessments
made were focused on the budget, schedule and Based on the outcomes of this case study, the top
scope/quality of the projects. Table 9 shows the three factors that caused project failure are: lack of
assessments given by the course lecturer. user involvement, lack of planning, incomplete
requirements and technical illiteracy. Comparing
Table 9: Course lecturer’s assessment these case study results with the Standish Group
Team Assessment report, it reflects a match on some of the factors that
No. Scope/ Quality Budget Schedule caused projects to fail. Fig. 1 shows the teams’ rating
1 Average Under budget On time on planning and time estimation. According to these
2 Good Over budget On time results, we can see that most of the teams indicated
3 Average Over budget On time
that they have good planning on their projects.
4 Average Over budget Over time
5 Poor Over budget On time
6 Average Over budget On time
7 Very Poor Over budget Over time
Fig. 1: Teams’ rating on planning and time Fig. 3: Teams’ rating on technical ability and
estimation resource allocation
Based on the feedback of all team members, team 7 According to comments given by some team
did not make good time estimation as shown in members, teams 5 and 7 do not have good
Fig. 1. Although team 4 indicated that they have programming skills among most of the members.
made good time estimation, they failed to complete Hence, they failed to achieve project scope.
the project on time due to technical illiteracy as
analysed above. Fig. 4 shows teams’ rating on requirements and user
involvement. Analysis on these two items was
performed on teams 4, 5, 6 and 7 only. This is
because these four teams have to elicit requirements
from the customer. Teams 1, 2 and 3 did not have to
elicit requirements from the costumers, so, the
feedback of these teams are not analysed. Although
all four teams indicated that they have average
(team 7) or good (teams 4, 5 and 6) user
involvement and have defined the requirements
clearly from the beginning of the projects, the
actual project results show that all teams except for
teams 5 and 7 did not fulfill the costumers
requirements. This could possibly be due to the lack
of user involvement with these two teams, and poor
leadership of the two team leaders.
Fig. 2: Teams’ rating on cost estimation
Appendix A
1 2 3 4 5
Very Poor Poor Average Good Very Good