In the context of increasingly more complex Information Technology projects being supported by developing technology, endeavours undertaken by programme management experts have become larger and more ambitious. As one would expect, better technology creates a strong support for such large-scale projects to be executed. However, unique or massive projects still see frequent failure.
There is no consensus about how project failure and success should be defined. It is either subjectively defined or left to assumptions and interpretations. There have been various failed projects in the IT industry that memorably began as game-changers in the industry but instead failed to achieve all their objectives, resulting in significant losses by the respective companies.
Only a few research papers have attempted an in-depth investigation of failed projects to identify the exact factors behind the failure. In this article, we analysed two high-profile projects’ failures. The data was gathered from various public sources. Grounded Theory was used to perform this research using the qualitative data collected from documents’ analysis.
The present paper discussed some theoretical considerations and applied them to two case studies involving massive public service sector projects in the United States (LAUSD ITI) and the United Kingdom (e-Borders).
The e-Borders project failed when its ecosystem became unbalanced; hence survival became difficult. Projects’ ecosystems are a reflection of the real world and are characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and unknowns. We can safely assume that when a project fails to manage one or more of these characteristics, its ecosystem becomes unbalanced. However, projects lack self-awareness of their ecosystem and its troubles.
LAUSD did not perform well in the areas of research and development, where the stakeholders focused on involving two companies to provide a one-size-fits-all solution18. The school district failed to understand that technology does not work in this miraculous and simplified way22. Instead, the project should have been about implementing a transformation, which requires thorough planning and good project management practice.
Organizations improve their delivery capacity by acquiring knowledge from past experiences. Each project failure must be investigated to deduce the true causes of the failure and hence a lesson(s) learnt for future projects33. Organizations’ future projects will have similarities in their ecosystems’ compositions as projects’ ecosystems are instantiated partially from the organization ecosystem.
Organizations prefer to turn the page after a failure. The assumption that each project is a unique instance is true. However, the project’s ecosystem will be, to a great extent, similar for future projects. What made a project fail in its ecosystem is a survival lesson for a future project.
Failures are opportunities to learn and improve. Each failure should be investigated and lessons drawn for future projects’ executions. Knowledge about failure will strengthen an organization’s project management execution and practice. What future research is needed to understand why projects fail? How can failure be converted into a learning opportunity? And how can lessons learnt be implemented into future projects?