I’ve seen statistics that anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of all projects fail to accomplish their intended objectives. Why do so many projects fail? I worked as a project manager for many years and two commonalities in all projects are change and people. Perhaps we are upgrading our technology, reorganizing or consolidating business units, replacing a member of the senior leadership team, entering a new market, launching a new product, or making some other significant change in how we do business. We are leaving the status quo behind and moving toward something new.

According to an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey of 600 business leaders, more than half of companies plan to engage in more change projects and spend more money on each in the coming year. Given current economic conditions, it isn’t surprising that many of these projects will focus on improving organizational efficiency. The survey also found that the two biggest challenges to the success of any change initiative are ‘winning hearts and minds’ of the people affected by the change and ‘lack of management buy-in.’ Most projects fail, not because of money or technology, but because of people. A perfect example is implementing a new computer system that is intended to increase efficiency, but you fail to include the people who will be the end users of the new system during the course of the project. The result is that these people don’t see the need for the new system; some transactions take longer to complete than before because the work flow wasn’t considered in the development stage; and so on. To mitigate the risk of project failure, involve the stakeholders throughout the project and communicate well and often.

What do you suggest to reduce the chance of project failure due to the people factor?