PMOz Book of Abstracts (Sept. 2013) (Sept. 2013) | Page 43

Wednesday, 18 September 2013 14:45 – 15:15
Improving Project Success by Early Warning Signs Meir Bonan Doctoral Student BAE Systems/Victoria University

In recent years the use of project management by organisations to deliver their strategy has increased, however, a large number of projects continue to fail. For example, a recent Victorian ombudsman report declared that every single major IT project in Victoria reviewed is late or failed with cost overruns totalling $1.4 billion in the last 5 years for 10 projects. The report concluded that all the 10 projects shared a common outcome; they had all gone off the rails. The reasons for project failures have been researched extensively over the years, yet success rates are not improving. Moreover, previous studies have not addressed the importance of using the study of Early Warning Signs (EWS) in order to improve project management process; overlooked the importance of using EWS in the idea development phase; creates confusion between EWS and success/failure factors which are sometimes interchanged; and has lack of indepth research of the project life cycle (PLC) impact on the use of EWS. To fill the knowledge and practice gap, our research aims to address the contemporary issue of how to improve project success by exploring new ways to identify the possibility of project failures using EWS in the strategic phase of the project and incorporating the identification of EWS related to each of the PLC phases. The research will answer following questions: What are the EWSs in the project and how should an organisation respond to the identified EWS in strategic phase? How should an organisation incorporate the use of EWS into the PLC? We use experts to explore the topic and identify where and how EWS can be used effectively. By exploring the use of EWS in the PLC and during the strategic phase of the project organisations can determine whether there is a need to intervene to ensure that the project does not fail.

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