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Why Do Projects Fail?

Article · January 2015

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Bent Flyvbjerg
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22 COMMENT >> CRITICAL PATH
Why do
projects fail?
It’s the burning question that we all want answered.
Here, BENT FLYVBJERG and ALEXANDER BUDZIER argue their case
Projects across industries and geographies
struggle to meet the most basic targets.
Five out of 10 technology projects, six
out of 10 energy projects, seven out of 10
dams, nine out of 10 transport projects
and 10 out of 10 Olympic Games do not
meet their cost targets. This trend has
been constant, and there has been no
improvement over the past century. Why?
Project management has reinvented
itself many times. Professional
communities have codified and shared
detailed best practices. Innovative tools
allow us to model complex projects, and
enable us to simulate and understand
intricate interdependencies. Yet, if the
goal was to improve project performance,
all these strides seem wasted.
Our ongoing research has found
there is a fundamental flaw in the
thinking of many project professionals
and academics. Solutions to fix project
performance attempt to make our mental
models of projects more lifelike. They try
to capture more of the complexities, more
of the detail. They aim to replicate the
success of weather forecasters, yet they do
not achieve the same results in terms of
predictability and accuracy of outcomes.
This is because project, programme and
portfolio leadership will not succeed by
modelling complexity – they will succeed
by understanding simplicity. We found
that masterbuilders use simple heuristics
and rigorous programmatics to succeed in
project management.
First, leading psychologist Gerd
Gigerenzer has demonstrated that
heuristics – the simple rules and
intuitions that guide true experts –
perform as well as, and often exceed,
sophisticated complex models. Project
leadership is therefore not about
understanding and managing more
complexity, more detail and more data.
PROJECT >> SUMMER 2015
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Instead, following simple rules is likely
to better contribute to success. These rules
include: “Size is dangerous, physical and
temporal – break it down where you can,”
or “Don’t always do! Understand the value
of not acting,” or “Think from right to
left,” and many more.
Would these heuristics work for you?
What are yours? You need to know, and
How can someone
build iconic buildings,
such as the Guggenheim
Bilbao, on time, on
budget and exceeding
the expected benefits,
over and over again?
if you don’t, you should probably not
be leading any projects of consequence.
Indeed, Gigerenzer’s most famous book,
Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart,
demonstrates how leadership is about
using heuristics that make us succeed.
Second, innovation research has
taught us the important lesson that it is
not the inventor, but the innovator, who
succeeds. It is not the person with the
brilliant idea, the flash of genius, who
successfully disrupts industries. It is the
system builder. Great leadership is not the
work of a single person, but the building
and orchestrating of the whole project
system. We found that programmatics –
key activities programmed into rigorous
structures and processes – are how
project masterbuilders build their
systems for success.
One of us studied how architect Frank
Gehry succeeds. The key question was:
how can someone build iconic buildings,
such as the Guggenheim Bilbao, on time,
on budget and exceeding the expected
benefits, over and over again?
Gehry shared his vision: it’s about
power. Project managers need to reclaim
the title and position of masterbuilders,
like the cathedral builders in the Middle
Ages. And we have shown how this
might be possible: by using simple,
smart heuristics to make decisions and
rigorous programmatics to build the
project system. This is what we research
and teach at Oxford – including coaching
managers to develop their own personal
set of eight to 10 key heuristics that will
work for them.
Lastly, we would like to make an
invitation: if your experience and
thinking resonate with our research into
the heuristics and programmatics of
masterbuilders, or if you disagree, we
would like you to join the debate. We
would like to work with you and your
leadership team so that we can all learn
more and succeed with our projects.
BENT FLYVBJERG
is the first BT
professor and
inaugural chair of
major programme
management at
Oxford University’s
Saïd Business
School
ALEXANDER
BUDZIER is a
researcher in
major programme
management at
Oxford University’s
Saïd Business
School