Project Management (1503431)

Semester Project/Spring 2023-2024

Due Date: Thursday April 11, 2024 (assigned 29/01/2023)
Marks: 15

Objective:
The objective of this project is to give students the opportunity to study real world projects and project
management in a real-life context. You are required to examine and study a failed project of your choice, but
preferably in IT, to learn the circumstances of its failure and report on your findings. This can be a project from the
local or global environment, the Internet, or any place/source. This is a group project that should also give you a
chance to build and develop your skills with regard to group work.

Project Description:
• Each 2-3 students should form a team. Exceptions must be approved by the instructor.
• Each group needs to identify and choose a project that was a completely failed project that is also
reasonable in size (scope), budget, and duration (schedule/time)
• The deadline for selecting and naming the failed project is Wednesday February 14, 2024. No project can
be selected by more than one group (FCFS principle will apply).
• Research the failed project and study its organizational and environmental context to determine the factors
and circumstances of its failure. Then write a report to document the following:
1. Background
• Briefly describe the organizational and environmental context in which the failed project was executed,
determining the industry and main business activity of the executing organization.
2. The Type and triple constraint of the failed project:
• Identify the type (application area) of this project and its triple constraint, including the schedule, budget
(cost), and scope.
• Indicate and explain the importance of this project to the organization, and the main reason why (or
intent) it was undertaken.
3. Key project stakeholders
• Identify the key stakeholders of this project, including internal and external stakeholders.
• Discuss their roles on the project and any implications or likely relationship to the project failure.
4. The reasons for the project failure
• Identify and document the reasons why this project failed. Analyze these reasons or factors that
contributed to the failure and classify them into (a) people-related, (b) process-related, (c),
organizational, or (d) environmental factors.
• Discuss organizational project management maturity and its role or relationship to the project failure.
5. Criteria used to define failure
• Identify and discuss the criteria used to define or determine this failure. Discuss whether these criteria
were set by top management, the project team, the project sponsor, or the project client (customer).
6. Recommendations.
• What do you think could or should have been done to avoid the project failure?
• Identify and discuss some recommendations to avoid similar failures in the future

Additional Requirements:
o Make sure to select and investigate a “project”, not a product, business, or operations that have
failed.
o Write a report of your findings (10-15 pages) using the SAME headings as above, and an
additional section of Introduction (brief description of the purpose of this project and your
solution strategy or plan of how to accomplish it) at the beginning, and a Conclusion
(including lessons learned and knowledge gained) at the end. Add a Cover Page with course
information, semester, project title, report date, and group member names.
o Use font 12 times new roman and space = 1.5 .
• The deadline for creating groups is Monday February 12, 2024. The instructor will create the
groups for students with no groups by this deadline.
 • Copy-and-paste (plagiarized) information is not accepted and will result in marks deduction.
Completely plagiarized work will be rejected, and University penalty rules will be applied.
• Late submissions will be rejected or accepted at the discretion of the instructor with mark
deduction.
• Submit (upload) your project in Word or pdf format to Blackboard on the link provided for this
assignment, by 11:59 pm midnight Thursday April 11, 2024
• The Blackboard link is called “ProjectSubmission”, under the “GroupProject” folder. No
email submissions will be accepted. Multiple submissions are not allowed, and only one
submission per group.
• Refer to the classification of project failure factors below, and read the following article to
support your analyses and findings:
➢ Kappelman, McKeeman, & Zhang (2006), “Early Warning Signs of IT Project Failure:
The Dominant Dozen”, Information Systems Management, 3(4), pp.31-36.

Why Many Projects Fail: Project Failure can be grouped into four categories – Examples