In a Web 2.0 world, IT is dramatically redefining business models. Whether providing new ways to reach customers, establishing radically new business-to-business relationships, cutting new-product time to market in half, or enhancing worker productivity and global collaboration, IT is the core enabler.

These days, however, less than 30% of corporate initiatives come in on time, on budget and on spec. The rest either fail outright or are significantly disappointing. So while much has been done to improve new processes, tools, techniques and governance concepts in the past 20 years, there is surprisingly little progress to show for it.

But what I found more interesting was this paragraph:

What we learned was alarming. The research suggests that the culprit in 85% of project failures is silence. The study showed that there is a definable set of project communication problems that are far more common than most senior leaders realize. An estimated 90% of project managers routinely encounter one or more of five critical problems in the course of a project, but the killer is the silence that follows. Initiatives are derailed when people are unwilling or unable to have conversations about the problems they see. When one or more of the five crucial conversations doesn’t happen, problems fester, work-arounds proliferate, politics prevail, and failure becomes almost inevitable.

85% of project failure is due to bad communication/silence? I knew it was a huge issue but that number astounds me. I haven't read the study the numbers are from so I have no idea how accurate that number is, but if it's even 30-50% that's too much! Effective communication is critical to project success and not communicating, project silece, is something you can fix. Put out a comprehensice communication plan for the project, send regular reports, hold regular meetings with the project team and keep everyone invovled in the project informed - developers, testers, management, stakeholders, other groups/teams involved and ensure that you are approachable with any type of news - good or bad. If the team senses bad news will get the messenger shot or cause hot lava to start shooting from your ears, they might hesitate to tell you the server just exploded. If they know you'll respond rationally, such as "Ok, what do we need to do to fix it?", they'll be more willing to keep you informed. Encourage open communication on all your projects - it's easier to get info timely so you can respond versus having to play catch up when critical updates or info are not effectively communicated. Links to the article/posts below:

Link to Journyx Post: http://www.project-management-blog.com/2007/03/28/for-it-projects-silence-can-be-deadly/

Link to ComputerWorld Article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=&articleId=279450&taxonomyId=073&intsrc=kc_li_story

Bonus link to Crucial Conversations mentioned in article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=279464&intsrc=article_pots_side

posted by Raven Young at Raven's Brain under  Project Management
Tags: Effective Project Communication,  Project Communication,  Project Management,  Project Failure