7 Reasons Why Projects Fail
In March 2018, a brand new pedestrian bridge at Florida International University tragically crashed to the ground in Miami, FL. This unexpected catastrophe caused the death of six people and injured nine. The bridge was designed to withstand a category 5 hurricane and was described as an ‘engineering feat come to life’. Its collapse was clearly not anticipated and exactly what went wrong is still being debated. The testing process may have damaged the bridge, the novel design concept may not have accounted for real world conditions, or errors may have been made during construction. While a fatal collapse of a new infrastructure system is rare, it is common for many projects to fail in a less spectacular fashion for the exact same set of reasons.
So why do so many projects based on great ideas die? What if there was a more predictive, constructive way to approach new ideas, instead of waiting to diagnose what went wrong at the end? Herein lies the utility of the pre-mortem to brainstorm all possible reasons an idea can and will fail. The purpose of the pre-mortem is to hopefully avoid all the potential pitfalls for an idea.
After completing multiple project pre-mortems, 7 common problems emerge over and over that prevent projects from getting done and stop great ideas from maturing into tangible results.
1. Not Finished
At any point in the process of developing a new idea into a project, it can come to an abrupt halt if the concept is not finished. This can happen from a loss of interest, the project losing momentum, other ideas becoming a higher priority, someone else finishing it first, or any number of other reasons.
The simple fact is that something that never leaves the drawing board or a pilot that doesn’t shift to a finished product will never get done.
2. Utility Isn’t Defined
The outcome of the project needs to have a purpose. If it is developing a new product, it must do something for the consumer. A government policy needs to explain or define something. A new business process needs to improve something. If the outcome of the project doesn’t have a clear utility that it provides to the user, why would anyone want to use it?
If the idea doesn’t provide what people want, improve their lives, fill a void, or explain something that is undefined, chances are the project won’t go anywhere.
3. Not Tested
A good idea can be perfect on the drawing board and provide exactly what the customer needs, but it isn’t going anywhere until it gets tested by real users. This can be the most intimidating part of a project because after all of the work that has gone into initial development, the customer might not like it.
It might seem like the best idea is to keep refining the concept alone, or in the privacy of a small group, until it is perfect before letting anyone else see it. Unfortunately, an idea that is never tested by real users is likely to have projects that only emerge in the real world. Those problems will prevent it from ever getting finished.
4. Isn’t Understood
When it’s time for a user to test the idea, there is the risk that it will not be understood. This is often the case when a new idea or product is said to be “before its time.” The new process could be complicated, different, and intimidating. If the idea is for a totally new solution that is completely different from previous methods, the consumer might not understand it at all (e.g., reviews of the first iPad).
No matter how good an idea is, if the people who need to adopt it don’t understand it, this is likely the project will never get finished.
5. Lacks Value
Even if the initial users understand the idea, that does not mean that they will also see value in it. Value can be the time or resources that it takes to adopt a new idea (e.g., the cost of the new product versus the cost of the current product). Value can also be how the user perceives the potential benefit of the idea. An idea for a new business process that results in a marginal increase in efficiency could be offset by employee frustrations over retraining, even at a minimal cost.
Value also applies to the willingness to invest funding into the idea. This could be personal investment, funding within a company or government agency, or external investment. If no one is willing to spend the time and money it takes to complete the project and turn an idea into a finished product, it will die.
6. Doesn’t Work Better
Having a good idea that is completed, tested, provides a utility, and understood by the user does not automatically mean that is is better than existing solutions. A local government organization’s project to revitalize a neighborhood by rezoning and offering tax incentives might be a complete and finished concept but it could be inferior to a commercial developers offer to buyout properties in a the same area.
A good idea will only succeed if it is superior to the other ideas offering solutions to the same problem.
7. Doesn’t Disrupt the Status Quo
If the existing practice isn’t viewed as a problem or there isn’t enough of a benefit from using the new idea, there is not enough momentum to disrupt the status quo. The idea could provide huge utility to the user but not if the user feels that the current solution is good enough.
Just because a project — it could be a product, policy, business process, or plan — is revolutionary, it won’t go anywhere if people are not interested in adopting it.
Conclusion
The existence of these 7 problems does not guarantee that they occur in isolation or in numerical order. As the Florida International Bridge collapse demonstrated, any single one — or combination — of the seven problems can result in the deathly failure. Conversely, some projects may face multiple pitfalls and still succeed.
For a good idea to have a chance and a project to be completed, it needs to be tested, finished, understood, valuable, disruptive, and worthwhile. In the absence of conducting a pre-mortem, thinking carefully about how to avoid these 7 problems can allow for a greater chance of success.
David Riedman is an expert in critical infrastructure protection, homeland security policy, and emergency management. He is a co-founder of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s Advanced Thinking and Experimentation (HSx) Program at the Naval Postgraduate School.
