Obstacles to the modelling of the causes of project success and failure
Robert T. Hughes, Abdullah Alshehab, Graham Winstanley · University of Brighton Repository (University of Brighton) · 2006
Our research seeks to improve the management of the risk of failure in information system development projects. As such it clearly needs to address issues of causality. A desirable outcome would be the construction of models which could indicate the likelihood of project failure for a given set of circumstances, based on the analysis of the performance of past projects. This paper reports on some of the obstacles to the construction of such models. In particular it considers: the diversity of perceptions and the problems of constructing a consensus between project actors with regard to the real circumstances of a project; the problems of diagnosing the causal relationships between project variables where more than one variable has an influence on a project outcome; the confounding influence on causal analysis of project actors who, quite rationally, desire a positive outcome to the project and so work to reduce the influence of negative outcomes. The last characteristic of project behaviour can lead to non-intuitive outcomes when projects are considered retrospectively: for example that project failure can be associated with the deployment of more, rather than less, capable staff to a project. In some ways this paper reflects the problems that can occur when researchers who come from primarily an engineering management background stumble unsuspectingly into what turns out to be social science research.