The Causes of Project Failure
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 3 7 , NO.
NOVEMBER
269
The Causes of Project Failure
JEFFREY K. PINTO AND SAMUEL J. MANTEL, JR. and failure. Some years ago, a noted expert on project management wrote, “The many instances where project management fails overshadow the stories of successful projects [2].” While there is little reason to adopt such a pessimistic view today, if we can gain knowledge about the nature and causes of project failure, we will improve our ability to implement projects. The primary purpose of this paper is to report the results of a recent study that was performed to determine if there exist patterns of causes of project failure depending on three contingency variables, 1) the way in which failure is defined, 2 ) the type of project being studied; and 3) the stage of the project’s life cycle at the time it is assessed. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The search for factors that influence project success or failure has been of great interest to both researchers and practitioners. Several lines of research exist in a growing body of literature dealing with the subject, all of it an attempt to develop methods to aid project managers to evaluate their projects, if not objectively, at least systematically [8]. One stream of work is focused on developing decision rules and/or decision support systems to aid in making systematic decisions about which, if any, projects should be terminated [51-[71, 1171, [19], [22]. A second stream focuses on the development of a set of indicators or identifiable conditions so that problems with a project can be identified and addressed before it has failed [2], [2 11. A third stream of research, an extension of the second but far more developed, suggests that project success is associated with the existence of several critical implementation factors (e.g., clear project mission, detailed project schedules, sufficient resources, etc.) [4], [14], [16]. In addition, recent research
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT, VOL. 3 7 , NO.
NOVEMBER
269
The Causes of Project Failure
JEFFREY K. PINTO AND SAMUEL J. MANTEL, JR. and failure. Some years ago, a noted expert on project management wrote, “The many instances where project management fails overshadow the stories of successful projects [2].” While there is little reason to adopt such a pessimistic view today, if we can gain knowledge about the nature and causes of project failure, we will improve our ability to implement projects. The primary purpose of this paper is to report the results of a recent study that was performed to determine if there exist patterns of causes of project failure depending on three contingency variables, 1) the way in which failure is defined, 2 ) the type of project being studied; and 3) the stage of the project’s life cycle at the time it is assessed. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND The search for factors that influence project success or failure has been of great interest to both researchers and practitioners. Several lines of research exist in a growing body of literature dealing with the subject, all of it an attempt to develop methods to aid project managers to evaluate their projects, if not objectively, at least systematically [8]. One stream of work is focused on developing decision rules and/or decision support systems to aid in making systematic decisions about which, if any, projects should be terminated [51-[71, 1171, [19], [22]. A second stream focuses on the development of a set of indicators or identifiable conditions so that problems with a project can be identified and addressed before it has failed [2], [2 11. A third stream of research, an extension of the second but far more developed, suggests that project success is associated with the existence of several critical implementation factors (e.g., clear project mission, detailed project schedules, sufficient resources, etc.) [4], [14], [16]. In addition, recent research