In the times we’re living in, I’m constantly amazed at how organisations can afford to waste money on doomed projects.
Let’s take Washington state’s License Application Mitigation Project (LAMP) as a cast study. In 1990 they tried to automate the state’s vehicle registration and license renewal processes. Initially budgeted at $16 million, the project cost climbed to $41.8m in 1992, $51m in 1993 and was last estimated (March 1997) at 67.5m of which $40m had been spent without result. LAMP was turned off in 1997, after legislators calculated that the project ultimately would cost $4.2million more annually to run than the state’s $800,000 per year incumbent system.
While this may have took place over 15 years ago, Organisations are still not getting the message.
• 57% of companies experience at least one project failure per year
• Only 2% of companies achieve targeted goals all the time
• 71% of companies do not consistently practice timely and accurate reporting on projects
• 1 out of every 2 projects exceeds its budget by 200%
• Of organizations rating themselves as having a mature Project Office, only 11% reported a failed project in the past year
Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom. I found case studies of companies successfully managing projects. It shows the challenges these organisations faced, and how they successfully overcame their obstacles to become better at managing all of their projects and ensuring project success. This E-book is free and can be downloaded here.
So which case study would your company fall into? Have you any horror stories or indeed success stories of your own? What are the key differences between project success and failure?
