Why Project Fails - 1001 reasons by Andrew A.L. Tan

Nowadays, we heard so many projects fail reported by Medias or experienced by the government agencies or by private companies regardless how big the company is.

In this book, the 1^st part explains why some projects fail. The reasons for failures are:-

1. Insufficient funds;
2. Improper focus of the project management system: the network must not become the project but help to manage the project;
3. Incorrect fixation of the first estimate; needs to be constantly dated;
4. Wrong levels of details;
5. Awarding tenders to the incompetent contractors;
6. Lack of authority of supervision;
7. Etc…etc…etc…etc

The author also listed out the problems and what is the successful project management. Some of the problems listed out in project management:-

1. Assembling an incompetent and incompatible team;
2. Poor lines of authority leading to difficulties in communications;
3. Complexity of handling a matrix organization with conflicting priorities;
4. Coping with politics, “managing people”;
5. Introducing changes involve rapid re-planning;
6. Bad reporting of progress;
7. Feeding wrong information to other parties;
8. Insufficient project definition prior to commencement of design work;
9. Etc…etc…etc…etc

Author Mr. Andrew explains that one of the project success factors is having an effective and efficient Project Manager where the project manager also acts as an:-

1. A generalist and a facilitator (a manager, not a doer);
2. A high level of communications skills for mediation, conflict management and negotiations;
3. Analytical skills;
4. A resource finder and cheerleader – manage to balance the good and bad situation in the work environment;
5. Technological and administrative credibility;
6. Inter – personal and political sensitivity;
7. Leadership (direction, purpose, focus);
8. Capable of “intelligent” anticipation of problems.

You can also find ways to be a successful project manager by having a successful project management that includes good planning, ability to handle constraint, consistently monitoring and reviewing the progress of the project, have clear objectives and aiming the target well, detailing in estimating and forecasting, and ability to handle change of controls.

The role of authority plays an important to ensure that only qualified consultant or contractors get the project. There must be a stringent control over both the development and construction process to ensure the project is done accordingly.

There will be many reviews on this book as I’ll try to review it extensively. The 2^nd part from this 1^st part will be reviewed later…InsyaAllah