Reasons Why Projects Fail. Part 1

In this series of posts, we will introduce to you the most often causes of stress and frustration during the projects.

It’s not news to us that some IT projects (I mean, most of them) are quite frustrating and tiresome. Have you ever considered why that happens? Is it because of deadbeat and incompetent studio performance? Or maybe you, as a client, are making some wrong decisions during the project? Well, both sides are responsible for the project workflow, and both are involved in its mess.

Managers don’t consider if the project is engaging for the team

Many people have innovative and full of obstacles project ideas… as well as many others have quite routine ones. There is nothing bad in it, it’s just the natural order of things.

So, you probably would ask, “Is it a bad thing that my idea is not innovative?”. No, no, and again no. Each idea could be worth its realization! Some performers are willing to make routine projects with no additional stress, but some of them are eager to meet the challenges and jump through hoops. Michael Loop in his book “Managing Humans” divides those people into two fractions as follows: phlegmatics and cholerics (yeah, simple).

These two fractions sometimes are strictly separated, and sometimes they are mixed in one team. Managers’ role is to communicate with the teams: ask them to introduce their concerns and worries, what they like, and what they don’t. If it doesn’t happen:

1. There is a big chance of giving a project to the wrong team which would burnout very soon;
2. Also, a problem appears when managers don’t consider this “natural order of things” and just trying to grab as many contracts as they can, even if there are no suitable performers for routine or innovative projects;
3. It can be even worse, sometimes studios take so many projects that performers can’t handle it so that they need to hire many new employees in a short period of time, this way there is no such thing as “deep employee integration”.

These three things bring much stress and frustration to the clients and the teams.

Why do all these happen? The short answer is money. In the perfect world, managers should match the project’s perspective with the team’s preferences and skills and make a decision on its basis, and deny it even if the project is estimated in millions of dollars. What are the ways to avoid such unpleasant circumstances?

Solution for managers: You (or any other responsible person) must totally understand the client’s idea, its perspective, and possess perfect knowledge if there are appropriate performers (phlegmatics and cholerics) in the company to complete it. Otherwise, your decision could be way off the mark.

Solution for clients: Don’t be afraid to make sure if there are performers that would be engaged in developing your project, and how many projects they are currently working on. Developers that are working on a large number of projects at the same time are very ineffective developers. Changing a studio from the very beginning is much better than experience frustration and uncertainty during the course.

Dive deeper if you are curious why clients don’t like the design they get.

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