Why do projects fail and why I care

I know I have been keeping quiet lately. Not because I have nothing to say or share but because I felt I needed to be silent, observe and reflect. I also admit I was scared. I was scared to share my thoughts and opinions fearing judgements, disagreements and backlash. I have been working on a lot of things, both personal and professional. As a new business owner, I wanted to be careful, to be ready, to be in a state of perfection. I realized that I can’t wait for the perfect value proposition, business model or website. I realized that waiting to be ready might mean waiting a very long time. What if there is no perfect state to achieve and that process and journey is what matters? In other words, don’t wait, just go for it! So here it is, I am back writing and sharing. My hope is that I get your feedback and learn from you so as to enrich my research and validate, tweak and if necessary, modify my conclusions and approach.

In my reflections, I have been grappling with many questions but the question that keeps coming back is “why do Tech Projects fail and why do I care?” This question is one of the primary reasons why I decided to become a business owner and why Kumilos Vision was born.

I currently live in North America, in the province of Quebec, Canada. If you are a resident of Quebec then you would have surely heard about the SAAQClic project. If you are living in Canada, then you might have also heard about the Phoenix project. If you haven’t heard of these initiatives, then I can suggest a quick search on your favorite AI platform, there is more than enough information available. As I understand it, both initiatives have more in common than differences. The main difference is that SAAQClic is a Quebec provincial government initiative, whereas Phoenix is a Canadian federal initiative. Both are digital transformation initiatives in nature. Both projects wanted to integrate systems into a centralized hub. Both project scopes broadly wanted to modernize, digitise, improve efficiency, transparency and cut costs, whilst improving service to the end user. Both started with a similar budget, scope and time frame. Both focused on technology as the savior and magic pill. All that being said, both also failed, more than doubled costs, delivered very little value and both have been called fiascos.

I have read both reports, Phoenix is more advanced as it has been going on for longer. SAAQClic is currently undergoing an investigation to fully determine what went wrong. However, a panel had released an interim report to try to make sense of why SAAQClic failed. When I compare it to why Phoenix failed, the results were almost identical.

I want to be clear. This is not a blame game against the government. Enough of that is going on in the news and media. I am just interested in finding out why and how this happened. How could SAAQclic fail in the same way Phoenix failed years before? Why were lessons learned not applied? This is after all public money. At a time when we hear about budget cuts to essential services such as in health, education and infrastructure, not to mention other social programs, the last thing we want to hear about is how these projects are not just hurting the bottom line, but also our security and way of life. I feel a sense of injustice as a taxpayer but also as a citizen who is engaged within the broader community. These examples of failed projects finally helped me understand the second part to my question: Why should I care? Because failing projects hurt the broader society and therefore ultimately, hurt people.

As to the first part of my question, why do tech projects fail, this becomes even more interesting in the broader context. I realized that projects fail in all industries and organizational types. I have worked for private, public , NGO and Charity organizations in start up, small, medium, large and multinational organizations. I have worked in Europe and North America. In my experience delivering projects, I have seen more projects fail than succeed. My research has shown me that this isn’t a new phenomena. Mckinsey* has been reporting for a while now that projects fail 70% of the time, especially of the nature of business or digital transformation. That’s a lot of time, effort, resources and money going to waste. These projects are not cheap, ranging from millions and sometimes billions of dollars over several years. One might argue that we can attribute this to the fact that tech projects, especially in the context of digital transformation, are more complex, larger in scale and scope therefore more prone to failure. Wrong. This has been true since the 80s when transformation projects meant modernization of production processes in order to upgrade and make production cycles more lean and efficient. So if this isn’t new, and we have had information as to why projects fail, why does it still keep on happening? Why is project failure the status quo?

In my last two decades of experience delivering projects, I became very disillusioned with project management. It seemed like no matter what I did, how hard I tried as a project manager, how hard my team worked, how much more money and effort and resources we threw at the project, it still failed.  Even after getting certified as a PMP and being armed with all the technical knowledge necessary and no matter how long I trained and practiced, I seem to be stuck with the same ground hog day experience at the end. We even had most projects delivered to the famous triple constraint which is to time, cost (budget) and scope. But when the dreaded meeting with the project sponsor or client came and while sat face to face with the person or group we were trying to help, I was told nine times out of ten, “thanks for the effort but this isn’t working, this is not what we wanted”.

I started to despair, I started to lose faith, and the job wasn’t fun anymore. I didn’t feel like what I was doing helped or made a difference. And on top of all that, I was being told that it didn’t actually work or worse yet, we made the situation more complex. 12 months or more of work, mobilizing a team to try to get to that finish line, only to be told: “Yeah, not what we wanted.”

The thing is, I love project management and being a practitioner of project management. I believe in its ultimate power and ability to transform and bring about positive change. But after so many years  of trying to do this for different organizations, I decided to stop and take a step back. I decided to really try to understand what was wrong. I realized that something had to change. I couldn’t be part of project delivery that caused more pain, confusion and suffering and not realize benefits or create value. I wanted to find another way, one that would be more aligned with my values and how I think projects should be prepared, delivered and monitored.

The good news is, after nearly 2 years of analysis, introspection, research and even meditation, I believe I am closer to the answers I seek. I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope. I now believe that I may have cracked the code and found the why and how. It took 20 years of experience and the last two years of contemplation but I believe I have finally found my secret sauce. As much as the research extensively shows why projects of this nature fail, many proponents of the same research would provide ways forward or solutions. I have read these recommendations and some make sense, but others, not so much. If these solutions worked, then why are projects of this nature still failing? Is the answer still in mega budgets, massive scope objectives and an army of consultants and integrators? Or is there another way?

In my opinion, a paradigm shift is needed, a change in mindset and status quo. The majority of the solutions put forward are based on assumptions that digital transformation is a race, that quicker and more is better, and that if we don’t jump on the next new piece of technology (has anyone heard of AI?) then we are dead. So long as digital transformation and tech projects are seen as races to be driven to a finish line or to be won, to an end result, goal or objective, and to do so in the quickest way possible at all costs, including human cost, then, in my opinion, projects remain doomed to fail 70% of the time.

What if we view projects as a journey instead of a race? What if the process in each step of the way, in each moment, was the focus and not an obsession to get to a result or a finish line? What if we plan, prepare, deliver and monitor projects with HUMAN BEINGS at the heart of every project phase? What if we take care of our team members and ensure each one is happy, engaged and autonomous to do their work instead of burning them out? What if the pains and problems of the clients and end users we are trying to help are clear and translated to benefits we want to realize to help them? What if project management can be done mindfully and consciously? Could a new status quo of project realization exist?

At the end of the day, this is my journey, and you have yours. I would love to hear from you about how your projects and digital transformations are going and what your perceived success or failure rate is based on benefits realization and real value creation. Please tell me about how the end user was impacted, how their lives improved, stayed the same or got worse.

Alternatively, if you are fed up with project failures, cost over runs, wastage and all the suffering and frustration that comes with putting in the effort but not getting the desired outcome and you are curious to hear about an alternative way, then I’d be glad to share my findings. What have you got to lose but 30 mins of your time? These are my opinions, my conclusions from my experiences and what I have observed. If this resonates with you, and you’re interested to find out more, then let’s have a chat. I’d love to hear from you and learn from your perspectives.

* McKinsey, Common pitfalls in transformations: A conversation with Jon Garcia