Project management: successes and failures

The art of failing a project (with panache): an x-ray of project management performance, 2020-2025

When you look for figures on business performance, none are as spectacular, as comical and as tragically consistent as those of project management. It is 2025, we have AI, the cloud, agile methodologies with names borrowed from combat sports, and yet we steer our most strategic projects with the precision of a supermarket trolley with jammed wheels.

Welcome to the "Project Management Follies", the permanent show where billions of euros are invested to... deliver nothing. Or worse, to deliver something nobody needs, two years late and at three times the budget.

If you think I am exaggerating, buckle up. The consulting firm McKinsey warned as early as 2020 that 17% of large IT projects go so badly wrong that they threaten the very existence of the company. This is no longer a failure, it is an act of organizational self-sabotage.

But why? Why are we so good at failing? The answer is not in the software you use. The answer is much more obvious: humans, the one sitting between the chair and the desk.

At the end of the article, something concrete: it is really quite simple to have projects that work.

The "Chaos Report": the permanent autopsy of our failures

For decades, the Standish Group has been publishing the "Chaos Report". It is not a report, it is the industry’s report card, and it is catastrophic. Every year, they remind us that most of our efforts are, at best, mediocre.

If we take their classic data (mainly focused on IT, but revealing of wider trends), the picture is bleak.

Imagine you order a pizza. In the world of projects, here is what happens:

• 16.2% of cases (Successful): You receive the right pizza, hot, on time.
• 52.7% of cases (Challenged): You receive a cold pizza, three hours late, half the toppings are missing, and it cost you the price of a return flight to Naples.
• 31.1% of cases (Failed): The delivery driver never came. The money is debited. The pizzeria burned down.

The Standish Group even found that these "challenged" projects cost on average 189% of their initial estimates. We have normalized this failure so much that we no longer talk about "flops" but about "challenges". It is a bit like calling a shipwreck an "unforeseen moisture experience".

In total, according to the Standish Group, 83.9% of IT projects partially or totally fail. In any other discipline (medicine, aeronautical engineering), that rate would send every practitioner to prison.

The chaos league table (pre-2020 data, but still the reference)

These figures are so consistent that you could almost use them to predict the weather. But the real drama plays out when you zoom in on company size.

The elephant in the room: the bigger they are, the harder they fall

You might think that large companies, with their armies of PMP®-certified project managers, their colossal budgets and their audited processes, would be the champions of success. It is quite the opposite.

The Standish Group has pointed it out: in large companies, only 9% of projects are a success.

McKinsey & Company, in a 2022 report on large capital projects (construction, energy, etc.), confirms this tendency towards excess. They found that:

• Cost overruns average 79% of the initial budget.
• Schedule delays average 52% of the planned time.

This is what analysts (notably Bent Flyvbjerg, cited by HBR) call "Black Swans": those mega-projects where 1 in 6 suffers a cost overrun of 200% or more. In France, there are a few notorious examples of these "swans" that look more like turkeys.

Size matters... in failures (Standish Group data)

The most surprising figure is that of mid-sized companies. They have the highest abandonment rate. Why? They are big enough to launch complex projects, but not big enough to absorb the shocks (internal politics, bureaucracy) that large groups have learned (badly) to handle.

The case of SMEs and mid-sized companies: failure by asphyxiation

If large groups fail through complexity and bureaucracy, SMEs and mid-sized companies fail through asphyxiation.

Here, the data from Bpifrance Le Lab are crucial. Their 2023 and 2024 barometers on SME health paint a context hostile to project management. We are not talking about project failure directly, but about the environment that kills them.

According to Bpifrance (November 2024), 27% of very small business and SME leaders consider their cash position "difficult". In another report (2024), they noted that 56% of business leaders felt that political and economic uncertainty had a strong negative impact, pushing them to postpone investments.

Add to that the "startup failure" statistics (90% of startups fail, 82% of them because of cash-flow problems) and you understand that in an SME, a project is never safe from a phone call from the accountant.

Why? Anatomy of a planned crash

This is the million (or rather, billion) euro question. The reports from the PMI, Forbes and the Standish Group all converge on the same culprits, and it is almost never the technology’s fault.

Killer no. 1: scope creep, or the "While we’re at it..." syndrome

"Scope creep" is the cancer of project management. It starts with a small sentence: "While we’re at it, couldn’t we just add this little button?"

A ZipDo report (2025) notes that 45% of project managers consider scope creep their biggest challenge. The Standish Group has always ranked it in its top 5 causes of failure: "Changing requirements and specifications".

It is the result of an absence of "No". Nobody dares to tell the big boss or the customer that their "little idea" has just cost €50,000 and three weeks of delay. We say "yes", and the project swells until it explodes.

The illusion of objectives: when nobody knows where we are going

This is my favorite cause of failure. Entire teams work for months on a project without a single person in the room being able to define "success". Service centers that burn cash because the projects are not even funded by customers, or worse, are internal projects not validated by management.

The Standish Group and Forbes hammer it home:

• Reason no. 2 for failure: "Incomplete requirements and specifications".
• Reason no. 3 for failure: "Lack of user involvement".

Strategic projects are launched without anyone ever spending more than 15 minutes with the end user. We build a Formula 1 car for someone who needed a bicycle. The result? McKinsey (2012) estimated that large IT projects delivered 56% less value than planned. The project is "finished", but it is of no use.

Phantom executive support and zombie projects

The Standish Group cites lack of executive support as a major failure factor. It is the opposite of the "While we’re at it..." syndrome. Here, it is the "Oh, you’re still working on that?" syndrome.

The business leader sponsors the project in January, then goes off on a brilliant new idea in March. The project loses its "champion". It is not officially cancelled, it becomes a "Zombie Project": it limps along, with no budget and no support, devouring resources through sheer inertia, the famous "escalation of commitment".

The human factor: mass disengagement

This is where we touch the heart of the problem. It is the blind spot of every Gantt chart. Your project can have the best processes in the world; if the team does not care, it will fail. If management keeps ignoring this reality, business will not improve.

Gallup’s "State of the Global Workplace 2024" report is terrifying:

• Worldwide, 77% of employees are disengaged ("quiet quitting" or actively disengaged).
• In Europe, the figure is even worse. Only 13% of European employees are engaged.
• In France, we are close to the bottom of the world ranking: only 8% of French employees are engaged.
• Gallup estimates that this low engagement costs the world economy $8.9 trillion (9% of global GDP).

How do you expect a complex, stressful project full of surprises to succeed when 92% of your team is doing the bare minimum while waiting for 5 p.m.?

And the culprit, according to Gallup? The manager. The institute estimates that 70% of the variance in a team’s engagement is attributable solely to the manager.

The failure of project management is not a failure of planning. It is a failure of leadership.

The heavy bill: more than money (the legal hell)

When projects fail, people think "money lost". But that is only the beginning. Project failures are one of the main suppliers of commercial courts.

The cost is not just the initial investment. A report from the CISQ (Consortium for Information & Software Quality) estimated the cost of software development project failures in the United States at $260 billion, but added $1.56 trillion in "operational failure" costs due to poor software quality. This is the time bomb: the "challenged" project that goes into production and brings your logistics down three months later.

Not to mention morale. A team coming out of an 18-month "zombie" project is a destroyed team.

Beyond the findings and generalities: what actually happens in the field

Real example: the digital services company that ends up in conflict with its customers and its employees

This reminds me of a recent SME, a digital services company (ESN), all of whose fixed-price projects were complete failures and financial black holes. All the projects ended in conflict with their customers, up to legal action. Why? The result did not meet the customers’ needs at all.

The causes

• No considered go/no-go decision: cash burned on projects with no ROI
• No project steering, approximate estimates, no measurement of time spent
• Vague contractual promises that customers could not understand
• Technical proposals that were not mastered and, above all, not challenged
• Borderline resignations and dismissals
• Failing management quick to blame the team for not being up to standard

The consequences

• Stagnating revenue
• Profitability turning negative
• Bank loans to fill the deficit
• The labor inspectorate getting involved

Real example: the disconnected executive committee director who plays the "task force" card every time the customer loses patience

"This is the second time I’ve been given the task force routine, and we’re still at the same point," the client (a major bank) confides in me. I step in as a firefighter on this project, which has been drifting for several years, ever since the project manager resigned in a blaze of controversy. I then notice that the engagements director of my company (a major ESN, a digital services company) is organizing task forces by lining up consultants (putting in budget, as they say) that fix nothing at all.

Several errors and therefore multiple causes

• Inadequate governance
• Management’s inability to question itself
• Failing management at every level: from the executive committee director to the project manager
• No direct, understanding discussion with the team
• Organizing task forces in the belief that lining up bodies will fix things by magic without changing the management

Consequence:

• A project losing money for many years,
• Resignations, sick leave for psychological reasons
• The spread of failing management
• The loss of the main customer (a major bank) and of all the service center’s projects

The project was turned around in 2 months, solely by intervening in firefighter mode with total autonomy (or almost, as some directors are still quick to come and collect the credit...). Listen to the client, listen to the teams, then challenge the client, challenge the teams. Smooth out the tensions and start again on a healthy footing without incompetent management.

Even though the project was turned around, the accumulation of errors on many other projects did not prevent the main customer from leaving.

What should these examples teach us?

Do not look for the causes with the teams but with management.

Whatever the project methodologies (Agile, Waterfall, ...), what fails is everything above them: governance, organization, management, communication; in short, real project management, everything that is not found in project management software.

Project turnaround does not fix a fundamental issue: customer dissatisfaction, and the wasted budgets that leave an indelible mark and seriously handicap the continuation of the business relationship.

Stopping the bleeding: are we doomed to fail?

No. But we have to stop the charade.

The Project Management Institute (PMI), in its "Pulse of the Profession 2024", brings some good news. It found that the approaches (Predictive/Waterfall, Agile, Hybrid) perform almost identically.

Its 2024 report shows a massive adoption of Hybrid approaches (a mix of Agile and traditional), up from 20% in 2020 to 31.5% in 2023. Pure Agile remains stable (24.6%) and predictive is declining (from 58% to 43.9%).

But the PMI insists: the secret is not the method. The secret is the "enablers": investing in team skills, giving them flexibility and empowering them.

The solution to the epidemic of failures is not a new piece of software. It lies in the 5 reasons for success listed by the Standish Group for 20 years, which are the exact mirror of the reasons for failure:

1. User involvement: Stop building things nobody wants.
2. Executive support: A "real" sponsor, not a ghost.
3. Clear objectives: Know where you are going.
4. Proper planning: Stop believing in Santa Claus for deadlines.
5. Realistic expectations: See point 4.

In short, we spend billions on project management tools to hide the fact that the basic principles of management are rarely mastered: respecting a governance, communicating, defining an objective, listening to your teams (Gallup) and knowing how to say "no" (scope creep).

Rather than turning a project around, it is better to act before it starts:

• structuring the governance, ensuring suitable management and securing a committed project sponsor is essential before the problems become insurmountable.

On this subject, take a look at what orgatypik does, a collective of high-potential people who work at the level of executive committees and management to avoid the consequences we have seen above.

Key sources and references

• Standish Group: "Chaos Report" (historical data and analyses, notably cited by TIGO Solutions and in various academic PDFs).
• PMI (Project Management Institute): "Pulse of the Profession 2024" (focus on hybrid methodologies and "enablers").
• McKinsey & Company: "Seize the decade: Maximizing value through preconstruction excellence" (2022) and "Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value" (2012, 2020).
• Gallup: "State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report" (focus on employee engagement in Europe and worldwide).
• Bpifrance Le Lab: "Baromètre TPE-PME" (November 2024, for the economic context of SMEs in France).
• Forbes / ZipDo / Sourcing Innovation: Various articles and compilations of statistics on the causes of failure (scope creep, planning, etc., 2023-2025).
• CISQ (Consortium for Information & Software Quality): Report on the cost of poor software quality (cited by Faeth Coaching, 2020).

FAQ

What is the main reason business projects fail?

According to several reports (Standish Group, Forbes), the main reasons are human and organizational, not technical. The 3 major causes are: 1) Vague or incomplete objectives and requirements, 2) "Scope creep" (constant drift in features), and 3) Lack of executive support (a phantom sponsor).

What is the Standish Group’s "Chaos Report"?

The "Chaos Report" is a reference study on the performance of projects (mainly IT). It sorts projects into three categories: "Successful" (delivered on time, within budget, with all features), "Challenged" (late, over budget and/or with missing features), and "Failed" (cancelled). Historically, it shows that only a small minority (around 16%) of projects are real successes.

Do large groups succeed with their projects more often than SMEs?

No, it is often the opposite. The Standish Group’s statistics show that large groups have a lower success rate (around 9%) because of bureaucracy and complexity. SMEs fail less through complexity than through "asphyxiation": cash problems or a lack of resources force them to abandon projects, as the Bpifrance barometers confirm.

What is the impact of employee engagement on project success?

It is colossal. The 2024 Gallup report indicates that only 13% of European employees are engaged at work. A project cannot succeed if most of the team is disengaged. Gallup specifies that 70% of this engagement depends directly on the manager, making project failure a failure of leadership.

Is the Agile methodology the solution to project failure?

Not necessarily. The PMI (Project Management Institute) "Pulse of the Profession 2024" report shows that Agile, Predictive (Waterfall) and Hybrid methodologies have almost identical performance rates. Success does not come from the chosen method, but from the ability to train teams, give them flexibility and clarify objectives.