Bad News Bears Repeating

Sometimes it's 50 percent; sometimes it's 90 percent. Who hasn't come across the purported percentage failure rate of projects? Some sort of "objective criteria" defines the failures in these studies — a certain number of days past deadline, for example.

As statistics go, a 90 percent failure rate is an eye-opener, so lots of industry experts, particularly consultants, authors, vendors and conference speakers, don't hesitate to cite it as proof that project management has failed us. Of course, what often follows is a solution — their solution.

But forget failure rates for a minute. You know, the world's best baseball players walk back to the dugout having failed almost 70 percent of the time. And they don't throw away their equipment or change their technique each time. They've accepted the reality of their enterprise: small, spinning objects traveling more than 90 miles per hour are very difficult to hit.

To continue the analogy, project teams get thrown a lot of curves, from before the project even starts (unrealistic estimates) through the heat of battle (missing-in-action sponsors, conflicting directives, competing resources) to an often-hazy closeout (if they get there).