Top Ten Reasons Projects Fail to Meet Business Objectives

As a business owner, it's important to initiate projects that will help you accomplish the business goals and objectives you set forth for the quarter or year. These projects can help you establish your place in the market, increase business, or improve your business reputation. Even with a project plan in place, there are various reasons that can contribute to your project failing to meet your business objects. Careful planning can help avoid these pitfalls.

Unclear Business Objectives

Companies develop their business objectives based on the goals they set forth for the quarter or year. If business objectives are unclear, it could leave a business to initiate projects that don't accomplish the company's goals or objectives.

Budget Restraints

Project changes can occur that increase your costs beyond what you initially budgeted. If the costs exceed what was initially budgeted, you may not be able to finance the completion of your project.

Insufficient or Unskilled Talent

When you develop a project, it's important to determine what types of human resources and skills you need at your disposable to make the project a success. Lack of talent can affect how well a project is researched, managed, financed and executed, all of which can impact whether it fulfills the necessary objectives.

Poor Research

Before beginning a project, spend a considerable amount of time doing research on your target market, competition, the current business environment, and trends in the industry. A lack of research, or the wrong research, can cause a project to miss hitting its objectives.

Unclear Target Market

Ultimately, any project a business does is in some way geared towards influencing its target market. If you have not properly define the target market, or are not clear on that market's needs and wants, the project you initiate will likely produce unfavorable results.

Time and Scheduling

Whether your project is an advertising campaign or the development of a new product, it's necessary to have a timeline outlining when, and in what order, each task needs to be completed. If a task is completed after its deadline, or out of sequence, it can adversely affect the success of the project.

Lack of Testing

The testing phase of a project can help you identify areas you need to adjust to ensure that the project runs as planned. If your project is a new website, but you launch it before testing, you may notice an influx of complaints from customers who say the site runs too slowly, fails to load, or contains features that don't work.

Execution Errors

Project plans outline specific instructions that detail how a project should be executed. If the execution veers from the plan, it can diminish the overall impact of the project. As a result, it may compromise whether the project fulfills the intended objectives.

Competiton

While you're busy working on projects, your competition is steadily working on projects of their own. Their projects can affect the outcome of yours, especially if some of your research and data is dependent upon what you expect them to do in the future.

Monitoring and Control

Project monitoring and control can help you can catch errors, make changes, when necessary, and keep an eye on how internal and external factors affect the project. When no monitoring and control are in place, a project is more likely to fail at helping you achieve your business objectives.

 by Miranda Brookins, Demand Media

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