Why projects fail? Introduction

The C-NOMIS case study

You may have recently read in the newspapers about the government-run C-NOMIS Information System project that proved to be a huge failure. This article and the following eight posts are going to try to get to the bottom of why this project failed and what can be done on future projects to help prevent such massive project failures.

The C-NOMIS project was initiated by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) in 2004 as part of a programme to improve the way in which offenders are managed by prisons and probation services across the UK.

The key measurable benefit expected of the overall programme was a reduction in the rate of re-offending. The desired outcome of the C-NOMIS project was a single, integrated IT system to support end-to-end offender management, information sharing, continuity and follow up.

The target finish date for C-NOMIS was January 2008, but as of March 2009 the project was still far from complete and the estimated cost had more than doubled. Perhaps more worryingly, the scope of the project had been downsized, leading to doubts about the project’s validity and strategic worth.

At this point, the National Audit Office published a damning report that exposed the C-NOMIS project as subject to not one, not two or three, but seven of the eight causes of project failure identified by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in 2002. The report’s conclusions for each of the eight points were as follows (whether or not the project showed one of the eight causes is shown in brackets):

1.  No clear link between the project and the organisation’s key strategic priorities
(partial)

2.  Lack of clear senior management, ownership and leadership
(yes)

3.  No effective stakeholder engagement
(partial)

4.  Poor approach to project and risk management
(yes)

5.  Too little attention paid to breaking down the project into manageable stages
(no!)

6.  Evaluation of the Business Case is driven by initial price rather than by value for money
(partial)

7.  Failure to understand or collaborate with suppliers at senior management levels
(yes)

8.  Non-integration of customer, supplier, user and project management team
(yes)

Looking ahead …

In my next post I am going to look at the first of these causes of project failure – the absence of any clear link between the project and the key strategic priorities of the parent organisation.

Tags: PRINCE2, Project failure, project management