One of the most traumatic decisions a project manager must sometimes make is to cancel a project. In an article titled "How to Fail In Project Management without Really Trying," Business Horizons Reprint No. BH010, the following (whimsical but true) reasons that projects go out of control were identified:
1. Ignore the project environment, including stakeholders
2. Push a new technology to market too quickly
3. Don't bother building fallback positions
4. When problems occur, shoot the one most visible
5. Let new ideas starve to death from inertia
6. Don't bother conducting feasibility studies
7. Never admit a project is a failure
8. Over-manage project managers and their teams
9. Never, never conduct post-failure reviews
10. Never bother to understand project trade-offs
11. Allow political expediency and infighting to dictate crucial project decisions
12. Make sure the project is run by a weak leader