Most Projects Fail. Here's Why - Breathing Space Blog

Most corporate projects fail. When a company experiences too many failed projects they sometimes turn to outside experts. Allen Evitts, founder and CEO of Essential Project Manager™ is one such expert. He’s found that in many cases, his clients had been seeking to establish project management processes as if they were all part of a machine. They wanted to create a generic form of project management that would apply to everything they attempted to achieve.

So, on projects large and small, apply cookie-cutter approaches. They believe by effectively manipulating project resources, and perhaps improve their reporting, all will be well.

“The problem is that they are overlooking the human element,” observes Evitts. “Within a single organization, and focusing on only a handful of projects, a cookie-cutter approach will still be ineffective.” Evitts believes that while corporations strive to have everything be consistent, trackable, and measurable, the unique nature of projects all but negates the ability to homogenize them. “Variation in human capabilities as well as interactivity all but ensures that each project must be viewed separately,” he says.