Daily Archives: October 25, 2024

Two and a Half Decades of Project Failure

  • 2024 Bain: 88% of business transformations fail to achieve their original ambitions (Source)
  • 2023 HBR: Some estimates place the failure rate as high as 80%.
  • 2023 Gartner: states that 85% of AI projects fail. As well, 87% of R&D projects never get to the production phase.
  • 2023 EY: 2/3 of senior leaders have experienced at least one underperforming [digital] transformations in the last 5 years (Source)
  • 2020 Standish Group: 66% of technology projects end in partial or total failure (based on the analysis of 50,000 projects globally). 31% of US IT projects were canceled outright and the performance of 53% ‘was so worrying that they were challenged.’ (Source)
  • 2020 McKinsey: 17% of large IT projects go so badly that they threaten the very existence of the company (Source)
  • 2020 BCG: 70% of digital transformation efforts fall short of meeting targets (Source)
  • 2020 KPMG: 70% of organizations have suffered at least one project failure in the prior 12 months (Source)
  • 2019 Everest Research Group: 78% of enterprises fail in their digital transformation initiatives (Source)
  • 2018 PWC: 75% of digital transformations fail to generate returns that exceed the original investment (Source)
  • 2018 Standish Group: only 29% of IT project implementations are successful, and 19 percent are considered utter failures (Source)
  • 2017 Gartner: 75% of all ERP projects fail (Source)
  • 2016 Innotas: 55 percent had a project fail in the last 12 months (Source)
  • 2015 Genpact: more than 66% of digital transformations fail to meet expectations (Source)
  • 2013 Innotas: 50 percent had a project fail in the last 12 months (Source)
  • 2012 McKinsey: large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted (Source)
  • 2011 HBR: average project cost overrun is 27%, 1/6 projects is a black swan with a cost overrun of 200% or more Source
  • 2011 Forrester: 70% failure rate of change management initiatives (Source)
  • 2010 Deloitte: only 37% of projects delivered the functionality on time and budget meaning that 63% of projects failed to some degree (if not entirely) (Source)
  • 2009 Standish Group: failure in 68% of projects is probable (because success in 68% of projects is “improbable”) Source
  • 2001 Standish Group: 52.7% of projects will cost 189% of their original estimates and 31.1% of projects will be canceled before they ever get completed (Source)
  • 2001 Robbins-Gioia Survey: 51% viewed their ERP implementations as unsuccessful while 46% did not feel the organization understood how to use the system (Source)
  • 2001 Conference Board Survey: 40% of the projects failed to achieve their business results within one year of going live those that did achieve benefits had to wait (at least) six months longer than expected (Source)
  • 1999 Gartner: 75% of e-business projects will fail to meet the business objectives through 2002 (Source)

Is it just me, or is it the case that:

  • many of the firms who have been chronicling project failures for over two decades are also
  • many of the firms that have been guiding IT projects for over two decades?