Lack of proper planning, miscommunication & unrealistic targets identified as leading causes of project failure in region – study

Lack of proper planning, miscommunication & unrealistic targets identified as leading causes of project failure in region – study

CMCS survey reveals urgent need to enhance project management competency across Middle East

A survey conducted by Collaboration, Management and Control Solutions (CMCS) has revealed that project failure in the region is mainly caused by poor project planning and methodology, unrealistic target completion dates, and lack of communication. The findings highlight an alarming region-wide underinvestment in enhancing project management competencies across various project-based sectors.
The majority of respondents pointed to improper planning and methodology (78 per cent), lack of communication (75 percent), and unrealistic target completion dates (67 percent) as the top three contributing factors to project failure. They also identified inadequate commitment and involvement from senior management (59 percent), insufficient budgets and resources (56 percent), too many assumptions and unknowns (51 percent), project politics and conflicts (38 percent), lack of set targets or measurable results (45 percent), and the formation of the wrong project team (27 percent) as other major causes.

“The downturn revealed a lot of flaws in the way the region manages its projects. By this time project-based businesses should have already learned their lessons, and yet our survey results show that many still adhere to poor practices and either delay or avoid key project management investments. We hope that our findings will serve as a wake-up call to project managers and make them realize that they need to invest more in project management tools and talent if they want to maintain the viability and competitiveness of their respective developments,” said Bassam Samman, CEO and Founder, CMCS.

Other catalysts for failure noted in the survey were lack of motivation and the inability to properly control the project team, insufficient risk analysis, lack of planning tools and weak IT infrastructure, slow decision making, lack of alignment with the organization’s strategic goals, delays in engineering and procurement, wrong choice of contractors, design changes, and economic instability.

UAE-based CMCS is a leading provider of project portfolio management solutions for the regional project-driven businesses. It empowers organizations across major sectors such as Engineering & Construction, Power, Energy & Process, IT & Telecommunication and Government sectors by utilizing state-of-the-art solutions from Oracle Primavera, Hard Dollar, Deltek, EcoSys, ADePT, eTimeMachine, and Synchro. The company is a registered education provider for the Project Management Institute, the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering, the Construction Specifications Institute, and the International Institute of Business Analysis. CMCS operates in Qatar, Bahrain, KSA, Egypt, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Libya, Kenya, India and Italy.