TM

AMI
The Cascading
Effects of Troubled
Projects and What
Organizations
Can Do About It.
A Whitepaper for
Software Companies,
IT Professional Services
and Consulting Organizations

TP-WP-CascadingEffectsofTroubledProjects-20240221
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Table Of Contents
Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
What do you have at stake if there are non-performing teams or troubled projects?

From Surviving to Thriving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The business world is shrinking because of advanced communication. However, IT services/
consulting sectors are facing more demands, competition, and challenges. Consequently,
such challenges are impacting project deliveries.

What Has Changed?

What Happens Then?

How Does It Impact You? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Without a good project delivery reputation, it is tough to sustain customers as
well as resources. It can derail your business and projects.

What Must You Do to Address This? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Get to the bottom of your business to find out the failure undercurrents that
affect your project deliveries. Work out ways to achieve the best for your
organization’s growth.

What If You Had a Solution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Imagine a solution that can mitigate all your issues. What’s more? It can also
bring to you an additional revenue earning opportunity.

Time to Be Proactive!
Delivered Services Opportunity (DSO)

Success Story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Leading Software and Services Organization with Multiple Delivery Centers

The Journey Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 2
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Executive Summary
E
stablishing and maintaining a profitable professional services business
while running projects is not easy. A single critical factor plots the
business’s trajectory for any software, consulting, IT services, or
professional services organization, which is your delivered projects and their
success. Project teams hold the keys to the organization’s future growth. The
continual challenge of delivering projects on-time, on-budget, and meeting the
customer’s expectations is now substantially heightened in our increasingly
technology-savvy marketplace.

Due to advanced communications and expanded global access to resources,

the business world is shrinking. Competition is increasing exponentially, and
defending your client base is a growing strategic imperative.

In this whitepaper, we explore the possibility of dramatically improving successful

project delivery and creating a brand-new revenue stream that provides a strategic
competitive advantage in the digital age.

For years, surveys and studies have reported massive project failures in the IT
software/service industry, causing recurrent business downtime. Implementing
projects have only become more difficult in our new digital world. More complex
technologies, increased customer demand, compressed timeframes, and
increased competition place an ever-expanding demand upon your industry.

The The The The

Challenges Impact Action Solution

• Changing Demands • Customer Dissatisfaction • Build project maturity • Predictive project risk
visibility
• Business Complexities • Loss of Reputation • Improve stakeholder
buy-in • Successful project
• Advance Communication • Dwindling Market implementations
Position • Enhance resource
• Fierce Competition utilization • Effective professional
• Low Profit Margin engagements
• Project Capabilities • Gain new revenue
• Reduced Business streams • Better revenue growth
Opportunities
• Staff Reduction
• Business Downfall

Figure 1: Executive Summary

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 3
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Running and delivering projects is hard, and it’s getting harder. Therefore, it has
never been more critical to deliver successful projects. Your reputation and your
organization’s very livelihood depends on it.

What do you have at stake if there are non-

performing teams or troubled projects?
X Customer satisfaction X Ability to address new projects
X Industry reputation X Future opportunities & pipeline
X Future market position (including future sales to your
existing clients)
X Service profitability
X Possibly, the very existence of
X Staff retention your business

Not only does your business have the opportunity to survive such high project
stakes, but doing so can lead to improved stakeholder buy-in, better resource
utilization, increased delivery success rate, and increased revenues.

Imagine if you had predictive project risk visibility that leads to actionable steps
sooner rather than later? This would vastly increase project success, improve
personnel utilization, and establish a new offering that positions you in a winning
position versus the competition.

This paper outlines how your organization can:

1. Learn why projects fail,

2. Avoid failed and troubled project implementations,

3. Secure new professional engagements much more

effectively,

4. Quickly expand your business with existing customers,

5. Offer an explosive killer solution nobody else has to your

clients without the “salespitch”,

6. Establish a seamless new offering delivered as a

byproduct of simply improving your project oversight.

…And, do all this with limited, if any, resource investment.

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 4
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

From Surviving to
Thriving
The Challenges of the Professional Services
Industry

P
rofessional services organizations are a critical link in every industry’s value
chain. Continuous value delivery and profitable strategy ensure success not
only for them but also for their clients.

However, times are changing, and so are changes driven by new technologies.
Business challenges are not as native as the bygone years. They are escalating
and diversifying by the minute, and in such unprecedented
times, maintaining a profitable professional services
“Projects were really business while running projects is not easy.
done by the heroics
For any software, consulting, IT services, or professional
of individuals
services organization, the very thing that holds good
with no standard promise is a successfully delivered project and the resultant
methodology.” business growth. But the rising business challenges
— Robert Tresente continue to threaten project success rates and the
PMP, Director - EPMO
and Strategic Portfolio organization’s future growth. Let’s take a closer look at some
Management at Moda Health of the most pressing challenges that the IT software/service
industry is worried about.

What Has Changed?

Changing Demands
The IT service industry demands are changing rapidly, but project development
approaches are not. Developing a quick value proposition is the need of the hour.
But responding quickly to the ever-changing customer needs is getting harder and
harder. Such an evolving demand landscape can threaten your business’s very
existence if you do not evolve with time and cater to the growing project needs.

Business Complexities
Demographics are changing fast, and customers increasingly want
personalization. Best practices are no longer the survival strategy for proactive
organizations. Customer expectation and experience is all that matters in our
C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 5
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

increasingly technology-savvy marketplace. You must offer personalized project

offerings to high-priority clients.

Advanced Communication
Communication networks across the globe have advanced significantly.
Technological advancements have brought people and businesses in close
contact with each other. Resources are much more approachable now. So, a

CHANGE COMMUNICATION
CAPABILITIES
Evolve in sync with Face the threat
the rapidly
COMPLEXITY COMPETITION Build a resilient
posed by advanced
changing demand workforce and
Meet the communication
landscape. Outpace the resources with high
ever-increasing and global access
competition, utilization/absorp-
business to resources.
defend and expand tion rate
complexities. your client base.

Figure 2: The 5C’s - Challenges in the professional services industry

single failed project can cause a customer to switch business contracts across
the globe within minutes, which is not at all healthy for your business reputation.

Increasing Need for Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V)

Today’s IT projects carry with them more integration of software and systems
and ultimately an expanding dematerialization of processes in our digital
transformative world. The increased number of project components have lent
themselves to massive potential exposure – for good or bad. The common
denominator is a true collaborative approach between the providing vendor and
the customer is challenged with precisely how to have a impartial ability to review
and affect project outcomes before any blame-game occurs.

Fierce Competition
Business competition is rising exponentially. Nowadays, customers have
numerous alternatives and service providers from which to choose. To be on top
of the game, you must deliver unparalleled business value and ensure exceptional
project success rates. That is the only way to defend and grow your existing client
base and retain your competitive edge.
C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 6
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Project Capabilities
Project
Your project delivery capabilities are critical to achieving
Scope

58% Only 58 percent of

teams understand
project value
customer satisfaction, continuous growth, and internal
optimization. Your projects must run a high utilization/
absorption rate of up to 95% to manage the client
demands/needs effectively and profitably. However,

Communication building a resilient workforce and resources to execute

57%
your projects is a real challenge.
57 percent of
projects failed due to
communication What Happens Then?
mismatch
In short, complex technologies, increased customer
Shareholder demand, compressed timeframes, and increased
Management

36%
competition continue to endanger IT software/service
36 percent of
projects were lost projects’ smooth running. They face the direct impact
due to changing of these challenges and struggle to meet the client’s
objectives
demands, eventually leading to failure.
Team For years, surveys and studies have reported massive
Planning

28% 28 percent of delivery project failures in the IT software/service industry, causing

breakdowns were recurrent business downtime. While digging deeper
caused by poor
estimation
through the project history, here are some of the primary
causes that internally trigger the projects to fail as well1,2,3:
Risk
Management According to a 2009 Standish Group’s CHAOS Report, 44

27% 27 percent of project

disasters happend
due to unexpected
percent of projects overshot deadlines, budget, and did
not meet business requirements4. Meanwhile, 24 percent
risks of customers faced complete project failure. One of the
primary cited reasons was supplier inefficiency. The claim
Resource was further affirmed by a 2005 Peerstone Research study
Management

23% Only 23 percent use

PPM or resource
management
software

1 Stafiz (2020, March 12) ‘Top 10 Reasons For Project Management Failure,’ www.
Leadership stafiz.com

54%
2 Greene, Jessica, ‘The top 9 reasons for IT project failure: Is your project at risk?,’
54 percent of PMOs www.atspoke.com
have no access to 3 Wellingtone (2020) ‘Annual Report: The State of Project Management 2020,’ www.
real-time project KPIs wellingtone.co.uk
4 Goodman, E. & Henry, P. (2009). Troublesome suppliers, issues, and their
management. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2009—North America,
Figure 3: Major reasons for project failure Orlando, FL. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 7
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

which demonstrated that lack of competence by the software or services vendor

caused the majority of project shortcomings.

Below are some quick snapshots of some critical project failures and the loss
they resulted in, not only on monetary terms but also some major embarrassment
for the IT vendor organizations5,6,7,8.

2000 2007 2012 2014

CLIENT: CLIENT: CLIENT:Royal CLIENT: NHS
US Navy Queensland Bank of Scotland Foundation Trust
IT VENDOR: EDS IT VENDOR: IBM IT VENDOR: Unknown IT VENDOR: Epic
PROJECT: Voice, Video, Network, PROJECT: Payroll System for PROJECT: Online Banking and PROJECT: Online Patient Record
Desktops, & System Training Health Dept. Funds Transfer System
CAUSE: EDS failed to grasp the full CAUSE: IBM faced unforeseen CAUSE: IT vendor failed to update CAUSE: Underestimation of
scope, overshot budget and time issues, inaccurate estimation and the software with no backup plan project scale by Epic and failure to
frame with inaccurate results poor system work deliver results
EFFECT: Paralysis of critical bank-
EFFECT: EDS has over $500 EFFECT: IBM banned from govt. ing systems and a resultant ripple EFFECT: System was a disaster
million in lost assets Projects and sued for loss effect on local business and performance dropped by 20%

2004 2010 2013 2019

CLIENT: CLIENT: Virgin CLIENT: CLIENT:
J.P. Morgan Airlines MillerCoors Crawford & Co.
IT VENDOR: IBM IT VENDOR: Navitaire IT VENDOR: HCL Tech IT VENDOR: Cognizant
PROJECT: Management of IT PROJECT: Online Reservation PROJECT: ERP Project Imple- PROJECT: PeopleSoft Financials
Infrastructure System System mentation Software
CAUSE: Failure to manage and CAUSE: Failure to quickly rem- CAUSE: Inadequate staffing and CAUSE: Poor project implemen-
deliver as an outsourced vendor edy abrupt system crashes by delayed project schedule tation
Navitaire
EFFECT: IBM lost billions of dollars EFFECT: HCL sued for $100 EFFECT: Cognizant suffered sub-
and eventually the contract EFFECT: Navitaire faced major million by client for compensatory stantial damages and got sued by
embarrassment damages the client

Figure 4: Biggest Project Failures by IT Vendors

The figure above depicts that it is essential to plan the resources and tools
to deliver successful projects. Else you face the threat of unknown risks. The
recent PMI survey, ‘Pulse of the Profession® 2020’, also uncovers that about
11.4% of business investments get wasted every year because of poor project
performance9.

Likewise, if such project failures continue to ruin your business prospects and
organizational growth, it will likely affect your business livelihood soon.

5 Garland. Anna (2015, December 19) ‘Five of the biggest outsourcing failures,’ www.itproportal.com

6 Appstronauts (2020, January 7) ‘5 Companies That Lost Millions After Choosing Wrong IT Outsourcing Provider,’ www.
appstronauts.com
7 Rao, Rajiv (2017, March 27) ‘MillerCoors sues HCL Tech for $100 million over failure to implement ERP project,’ www.
zdnet.com
8 Phadnis, Shilpa (2019, February 14) ‘US company sues Cognizant for breach of contract,’ www.timesofindia.com

9 PMI (2020) ‘Pulse of the Profession 2020: Ahead of the Curve: Forging a Future-Focused Culture,’ www.pmi.org.

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 8
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

How Does It Impact

You?
T
roubled or late projects in the IT service industry cause a major impact
on the revenue stream. When a single project derails, it not only obstructs
your current venture but also begins a chain reaction causing multiple
issues in the adjoining projects. The result is a cascading negative impact,
including significant loss of internal project resources,

44
revenue inflow, forecasting, and business optimization10.

% Failure surfaces in any sized delivery organization - big

or small.
In the previous examples, we hear about the bigger
of project managers use no
software, even though PM disasters from the national press. Yet all firms can suffer
software has proved to improve
from projects that go awry. For smaller organizations
project performance.
these smaller project failures are even more impactful on
the organization’s bottom line, reputation, and even their

97 %
continued viability because they lack the depth of resources
necessary to recover.

Research done by The Concours Group11 highlight that it is

not so much that problems occurred, but it was how quickly
of organizations believe project
management is critical to business the leadership managed the problems that most affected
performance and organizational outcomes. They identified five key issues that repeatedly
success.
lead to problems being hidden or avoided until it was too
late to take corrective actions. Those issues were:
Figure 5: PM Survey by PwC
1. Unrealistic limits - either deadlines or resources;
2. Sponsors that didn’t provide leadership to see a project
through to completion;
3. People avoiding / ignoring the priority-setting process;
4. Failure to speak up when problems occur; and
5. Team members that failed to support the project.

Breakdowns in any combination of these issues resulted in projects, and IT

professional service firms of all sizes experiencing damage to their professional

10 PwC global project management report 2012, PwC

11 The Concours Group (2014), ‘Silence Fails - The five Crucial Conversations for Flawless Execution’

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 9
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

reputations and profitability. Additionally, their research indicated that 90 percent

of project leaders regularly experience one or more of these problems in nearly 40
percent of their projects.

But these failures do not happen in a vacuum. It is critical to understand how one
project failure in a portfolio can have a ripple effect across the entire organization.

The Cascading Effect

The underlying connection between business challenges and project delivery
failure is well-founded, but organizations do not initially observe that. You only
start noticing when bottlenecks grow exponentially in size and diversity. Here are
some cascading consequences that IT service organizations face when a project
delivery is doomed.

f Customer Dissatisfaction
Based on customer requirements, the team brainstorms to determine project
goals and estimates. Interestingly, 35 percent of project failures are caused
because teams collected the wrong requirements.12 This creates a chain
reaction leading to delayed timelines, cost overruns, drop in service quality,
project support withdrawal, and unhappy customers (internal and external)13.

f Lack of Customer/Client Collaboration

The sophistication of IT project delivery and realization often suffers from
the complete lack of agreed upon project IV&V. This leads to a lack of an
accurate project status between the vendor and the customer. The lack
of IV&V becomes a contentious discussion with the customer. Without a
verified method to provide true insight into the project, the customer tends
to always defend their position and the blame-game begins - it always winds
up being the vendor’s fault. After all, the customer is paying the service
provider, therefore they always tend to have the upper hand. The lack of
factually-based collaboration is a relationship destroyer when it should be a
relationship builder.

f Loss of Reputation
Be it a startup or an established IT service firm, your organization’s brand
reputation depends on how many successful projects you have delivered.

12 Cohen, Hannah (2019, February 7), ‘Project Management Statistics: 45 Stats You Can’t Ignore,’ www.workamajig.com

13 McCarthy, Kieren (2019, April 23) ‘Accenture sued over website redesign so bad it Hertz: Car hire biz demands $32m+
for ‘defective’ cyber-revamp,’ www.register.com

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 10
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Failure to deliver/innovate creates massive repercussions that may even

compel longstanding patrons to move their portfolio elsewhere.

f Dwindling Market Position

Digitization and social media platforms make news travel faster. The flipside
is that the shareholders withdraw their support once they get wind of your
organization’s poor project delivery. Thus, your future position in the market
takes a significant hit.

f Low-Profit Margin
For IT consulting firms, projects are primary revenue generators, unlike other
businesses. The additional penalty and litigation charges, along with fewer
projects, bring down your organization’s profit margin.
“When unknown This is in addition to “firefighting” of troubled projects by
assigning additional experts that cannot be customer
project risks cause you
billable. So, when unknown project risks cause you to assign
to assign emergency emergency personnel to “fix” them, your business suffers a
personnel to “fix” double negative effect:
them, your business X Project margin drops as additional resources are not
suffers a double paid for by the client
X The best resources are invested in fixing other
negative effect. project issues rather than being readily available for paid
engagements

f Reduced Business Opportunities

Clients expect more transparency and accountability due to the plethora
of offerings available to them. One failed service delivery can cost you the
next business opportunities you had with them. This can threaten the very
existence of your business.14

f Staff Reduction
Companies usually let go of high-paying professionals and underperformers
during an economic slowdown. With fewer projects, you also need fewer
resources to keep the lights on. However, employee shortage can also cause
a revenue loss. The scarcity of good project management candidates can
cost companies a $207.9 billion GDP loss by 2027. 15

14 Andriole, Steve (2020, Dec 1) ‘Why No One Can Manage Projects, Especially Technology Projects,’ www.forbes.com

15 Vardhman, Raj (2020, Mar 23) ‘25 Astounding Project Management Statistics [2020 Update],’ www.goremotely.net

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 11
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

f Business Downfall
Seventeen percent of IT project failures cause companies to shut down.16
Without value delivery, organizations cannot survive the growing complexities
in customer demands and industry policies and regulations.

With so much at stake—and so much in progress already—organizations must

rethink some fundamental questions: What do we offer? How do we re-strategize?
What practice should we adopt? Who will be tasked to do the work? How can we
gain insight into potential project problems and failures BEFORE they occur?

Case Study 1:
CAPGEMINI SUFFERED A BIG LEGAL DISPUTE WITH NHS 24
OVER AN $159.8M IT PROJECT.
f Capgemini lost the contract and the client as they could not complete
the project on time due to an inadequate business case, bad project
management and spiraling costs.
“The failure of Capgemini to meet its commitment to supply a working
solution in 2013 manifested these weaknesses. Not only have the different
programme boards and committees failed to identify and manage the risks;
the various audits and reviews have also proved ineffective in recovering the
programme.”
— Statement by client - NHS 24 in a document submitted to
Scottish Public Audit Committee – Jan’201617

Case Study 2:
CGI FEDERAL LOST FACE OVER A $93M HEALTHCARE.GOV
WEBSITE ROLLOUT FIASCO.
f CGI Federal’s contract was not renewed but was given to another with a
better deal.
f CGI’s financial support was halted by Massachusetts and Vermont state
govts. due to missed deadlines and site glitches.
f CGI’s stock dipped by 3.8 percent in New York trading.
“At the end of the day, you have a company here that turned in subpar and
visibly high-profile work. I think that that’s a fireable offense.”
— Clay Johnson, former Chief Executive Officer of the
Department of Better Technology, Presidential Innovation
Fellow18,19,20

16 Vardhman, Raj (2020, Mar 23) ‘25 Astounding Project Management Statistics [2020 Update],’ www.goremotely.net

17 Evenstad, Lis (2016, January 20) ‘NHS 24 admits ‘systematic failure’ of £117m IT project,’ www.computerweekly.com

18 Rampton, Roberta; Humer Caroline (2014, January 10) ‘U.S. to part with contractor CGI for Obamacare website,’ www.
reuters.com
19 Kim, Kathy (2014, May 7) ‘CGI: We Weren’t Fired From Healthcare.Gov Contract,’ www.crn.com

20 Insurance Journal (2014, January 10) ‘CGI Loses Obamacare Contract to Accenture: Report,’ www.insurancejournal.com

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 12
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Case Study 3:
IBM’S DEBACLE WITH THE $155 MILLION PROJECT FOR THE
STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA.
f IBM’s contract was cancelled as the project was 42 months behind
schedule and $60 million over budget.
f IBM was sued, had a cash flow problem and downgraded the stock.
f IBM gave employees a mandatory 1-week furlough to recover their losses.
“The taxpayers paid $155 million to get a computer system and they did
not get it. Whose fault is that other than IBM? I think they should make
restitution. We paid for a product and we didn’t get it.”
— Rep. William Keller, Member of the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives21,22

Case Study 4:
ACCENTURE FACED A DISASTER WITH THE $81.5M “I6
PROJECT” FOR SCOTTISH POLICE SERVICES.
f Accenture’s unrealistic estimation and scoping resulted in insurmountable
flaws and a delayed project.
f Accenture lost the contract and eventually paid Scottish Police a
compensation of $33.66m.
“I had doubts as to the capability of the contractor to deliver this going
forward. The contractor will need to prove to us, as part of these
negotiations, that they are completely capable of delivering this because they
have very clearly let us down.” ,
— Martin Leven
Director of ICT at Police Scotland23,24

21 Pollack, Andrew (2013, August 8) ‘The massive recent project failures at IBM strike at the heart of why outsourcing fails,’
www.thenorth.com
22 Thibodeau, Patrick (2017, March 17) ‘Pennsylvania sues IBM over troubled $110M IT upgrade,’ www.computerworld.
com
23 Exposing Evil Empire ‘Another IT Disaster Signed Accenture Cripples Scottish Police,’ www.exposingevilempire.com

24 Alderson, Reevel (2017, March 9) ‘‘Lost’ £200m in savings after police IT scheme collapses,’ www.bbc.com

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 13
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

What Must You Do to

Address This?
E
xecutive leaders and project managers across professional services
organizations realize that strong governance lays the foundation of a
profitable business. The recent PMI survey, ‘Pulse of the Profession®
2020’, strongly advocates adopting good project governance practices to achieve
successful business outcomes. Introduce the following elements to survive the
high project stakes and strengthen your project success probability:

Figure 6: The ROI of Project Maturity

1. Build Your Project Maturity

Project maturity has been discussed a lot over the years. But very few have
realized its significance when it comes to value delivery. The recent PMI survey25
holds enough facts to showcase that organizations with highly mature project
capabilities achieve better success rates than those that are not.

25 PMI (2020) ‘Pulse of the Profession 2020: Ahead of the Curve: Forging a Future-Focused Culture,’ www.pmi.org
C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 14
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

The survey also highlights a few key project metrics to support its claim. So, if you
do not wish your project capabilities to get in the way of your success, the time is
now to upscale your project maturity level.

“Many software projects are late or fail due to a

lack of good coordination and detailed planning.
Teams need to implement a bottom-up
planning process that identifies dependencies
between deliverables and includes estimates
from the engineers themselves. After the
release plan is set, I run daily 15-minute stand-
up meetings where issues are surfaced and new
risks are identified and managed.”
—Dave Mariani
Chief Strategy Officer, Founder at AtScale.

2. Enhance Resource Utilization

It is essential for business continuity to produce client delivery projects on-
time, on-budget, and meet customer requirements. Successful projects have a
95-percent utilization rate while failing projects only use 75 percent of available
resources. Improving resource utilization enhances your project performance.
Ensure you have a 95-percent utilization rate to level up well beyond the success
quadrant26.

3. Improve Stakeholder Buy-in

Apart from the external factors, project success or failure largely depends on
having the right team commitment levels, stakeholder buy-in, and executive
support.

The risk of project failure is imminent across all industries, organization types, and
project sizes if the stakeholder buy-in is inadequate or fluctuates. Ensure that you
secure and sustain buy-in from all stakeholders on your project or program right
from the very beginning. By implementing a systemized approach to project IV&V,

26 Wellingtone (2020) ‘Annual Report: The State of Project Management 2020,’ www.wellingtone.co.uk

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 15
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

parties can effectively collaborate, focus, and be tough on the problems - not their
relationship.

4. Sustain the Existing and Gain New Revenue

Streams
Successful projects enhance your credibility and pave the way for additional
revenue streams through referral and repeat business. But, when a project is at
stake, both your delivery success rates and revenue pipeline take a hit. So, course-
correct your project deliveries before they go down the road. Make sure that your
projects meet the customer needs and contribute further to your revenue growth.

Why not have a solution that guarantees these factors and ensures happy
stakeholders? Time is a crucial factor for project progress. Instead of creating
reports, why not highlight project priorities and challenges to customers/
stakeholders right from the same platform? Why struggle when you can turn your
challenges into opportunities for scalable business growth?

We have designed a solution that could genuinely take all your troubled projects
away and drastically decrease your professional service failures while at the same
time creating a new profitable revenue stream for your organization. It’s called
TrueProjectTM!

50
50% of firms said that
%
22 %
Only 22% of
55 %
55% of organizations
they spend 1 or more organizations use a don’t have access to
days to manually PM software real-time KPIs
collate project reports

Figure 7: PM Survey by PwC

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 16
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

What If You Had a

Solution?
T
he blueprint for your project success is TrueProject, a management control
and oversight SaaS solution designed to monitor all your projects, all
the time. It identifies risk and early warning signs for virtually any type of
project and allows you to effectively review your KPI’s and proactively address
potential problems before they become unmanageable.

It has been in design and implementation for over 12 years and it’s latest release
has been refined and customized specifically for the professional services
industry.

TrueProject gathers information from all project team members allowing

enforcement and measurement against best practices. The analytics provide
insight weeks or even months in advance to avoid challenged or failing projects.
The result? Increased project success!

Let consistent project success not be a far-fetched dream. With TrueProject,

you can:

X Build your competitive position X Create additional and enhanced

and outpace others in the revenue streams as a
industry, byproduct,
X Deliver unequaled project X Achieve better resource
success rates and scale up utilization (>=95%) and improve
your business’ reputation, your margins,
X Collaborate on an exceptional X Leverage high performance
level with your customers - and transparency to build
delivering validated insight, customer trust.

You can do all this and more with our new customer-centric
partnership program - Delivered Services Opportunity (DSO).

Want to know how? Let’s take a look further.

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 17
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Time to Be Proactive!
Delivered Services Opportunity (DSO)
The TrueProject Delivered Services Opportunity program
is a unique program to exclusively assist IT services and
“One of the major
consulting firms. It significantly improves your delivery team
factors in a success or
performance and overall project success trajectory.
failure of any project
The business partnership program facilitates a successful
is the difference
project delivery by assisting in a variety of tasks. It all comes
between being
packaged with our new business opportunity for your
reactive compared to organization:
being proactive.”
f Improve sales efficiency of new engagements:
— Bruce Taylor, Independent
Project Management Engaging customers with new services and offerings is
Consultant, a published author
and speaker tough. Enroll in the DSO program to gain full access to
TrueProject, our governance and oversight management
system, for any or all your customer projects. Decrease project roadblocks
and use your newly found success to grow your delivery and sales efficiency.

f Scale up your delivery from ‘acceptable’ to ‘great’:

Poor project delivery quality results in reworks, burnout, and disagreements.
The program is designed to ensure that your product or service quality
is nothing less than exceptional. Additionally, utilizing TrueProject’s
independently verified insight provides you with the indisputable facts that
allow you to enhance your vendor/customer collaboration. Furthermore,
white-labeled reporting can offer a competitive edge to your organization.

Get downstream Understand Start the ‘fix’ early Retain customer Safeguard your Pave the way for
visualization of ‘why’ and ‘how’ of before the risk and team upcoming better revenue
project the project makes an adverse confidence before projects from the and business
bottlenecks risks early impact things go wrong risks at hand growth

Figure 8: Blueprint for Project Success

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 18
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

With TrueProject reports containing your logo, you now have a new method
of branding your organization tied specifically to proactive project insight.
More importantly, your organization establishes the highest level of customer
delight, even when you are not in front of your client.

f More easily expand business from your existing client base:

With the DSO program, you can manage project risks early and course-
correct your strategies. Make positive contributions to your client’s project
success rates and pave the way for expanding your business with them.
The opportunity for add-on business from your client increases in direct
proportion to your customer’s enhanced satisfaction level due to TrueProject.

f Succeed with limited investment:

Resource shortage can create a barrier to project success. However, our
partner program even supports a low-operating investment. Our affordable
program could streamline your revenue right off the bat, literally from the very
first project on the very first day of usage.

f Offer the perfect solution without the sales pitch and achieve
additional NEW revenue
TrueProject provides management oversight and governance on your client
projects’ delivery. As a byproduct of just merely using TrueProject, your
organization continually shows never before seen analytical insight to your
client. They receive your branded reports highlighting and predicting potential
problems before they occur. At the close of your project, your client is now

Improve sales Scale up delivery Expand business Succeed with Achieve

efficiency of new from ‘acceptable’ with existing limited additional
engagements to ‘great’ client base investment revenue
opportunities

TrueProject DSO Program

Figure 9: TrueProject DSO Program

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 19
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

thoroughly impressed with the benefits of TrueProject and your organization.

Plant the seed to your client about using TrueProject for their projects.
The DSO program allows you to resell or simply refer the end-user client
opportunity and earn reward fees for up to 36-months. As the client procures
TrueProject, you have cemented a brand-new revenue opportunity by using
the product to provide surety and success for your original project delivery.

So, don’t stop at just pleasing clients with your successful project deliveries.
Improve your service delivery, efficiencies, expand your business, and add new
revenue streams with TrueProject.

Now is the time to be proactive! Leverage TrueProject and our DSO Partner
program to protect your organizational downtime and client relationships. Create
new revenue streams as an added advantage. Before delivery issues overshadow
your potential business wins and opportunities, reach out to us and be the front-
runner!

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 20
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Success Story
Leading Software and Services Organization
with Multiple Delivery Centers
Challenge
The organization relied on great project managers to run projects. Projects
typically went well, but when they failed, it was a significant problem. It was a
surprise to the business when customers informed the
company that there were problems or failing components of
“TrueProject provides projects—this caused project overruns, increased costs, and
a competitive lower margins, but more importantly, disenchanted clients
advantage in that also put the future business in jeopardy.

managing our client The true status and knowledge of any given project’s critical
engagements. The issues were not apparent without full cooperation from all
ability to have the project staff. Communication seemed to be flowing only
downward from management, and the team felt as though
platform highlight
they were not contributing to the project’s success.
issues way before they
actually happen can Actions Taken
significantly reduce The business could no longer hope that projects were
delivered successfully. Waiting for the paying customer to
cost and time over-
deliver the surprise of a failing project status was no longer
runs.”
an option. The company moved forward with the action of
— Bala Varadarajan implementing TrueProject across an initial pilot group of
COO of a leading IT Service
Management firm projects. This was followed-up with expanding to the entire
project portfolio. This decision:

X Established the basis for project governance, approval, and measurement —

including defining roles, policies, and standards, and associated processes,
X Created the monitoring of project’s progress, stakeholder’s commitment,
results achieved, and the leading indicators of failure,
X Measured the outputs, outcomes, benefits, and value — against both the plan
and measurable expectations,
X Allowed for system configuration with specific questions, rules, and
dashboards to fit the organization’s process, challenges, and culture.

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 21
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Benefits and Results

X The organization’s management team now knows what projects, KPIs, and
issues warrant immediate attention and takes timely action
X Early identification and mitigation of project risks.
X Elimination of customer surprises.
X Improved communication with extended team resources.
X Staff members now have a voice in the project. They feel they have direct
contribution to project success.
X The organization is now positioning TrueProject as a new revenue stream
catalyst in customer engagements.

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 22
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

The Journey Forward

Technology is progressing fast and so are hidden risks. Even well-practiced
strategies, ideas, and measures are not bold enough to hold your projects tight.
As leaders of project delivery teams, you need to look through a future-focused
lens and see through the hidden hurdles long before they impact your business
profitability, reputation, and competitive position in the marketplace.

Now is not the time to wait for a project to fail but to rethink your strategy before
the adversities impact your business growth. With the TrueProject DSO program,
get ready to:

X Always receive early warnings X Promote project clarity and

for an impending project risk, continuous customer feedback
X Identify service delivery loop,
problems before they impact X Share project status reports per
outcomes, customer leadership interests,
X Improve service delivery team X Establish best practices across
utilization, all professional services
X Power up services leaders with portfolios,
accurate project predictions, X Avoid recurring past project
mistakes from captured
insights.

Let our DSO partnership enable your delivery offerings to meet customer interests,
enhance business reputation, and optimize resource utilization. With improved
profit margins and a new pipeline of business opportunities, get a competitive
edge to establish your organization as the market leader.

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 23
 TM

AMI The Cascading Effects of Troubled Projects

and What Organizations Can Do About It.

Appendix
Figure 1: Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Figure 2: The 5C’s - Challenges in the professional services industry. . . 6

Figure 3: Major reasons for project failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Figure 4: Biggest Project Failures by IT Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Figure 5: PM Survey by PwC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Figure 6: The ROI of Project Maturity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Figure 7: PM Survey by PwC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 8: Blueprint for Project Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Figure 9: TrueProject DSO Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

TM
CORPORATE OFFICES TrueProject

AMI
1390 Ridgeview Drive (610) 530-5283
Allentown, PA 18104 [email protected]
www.TrueProjectInsight.com

TP-WP-CascadingEffectsOfTroubledProjects-20240221
February 21, 2024

C o p y ri g h t © 2 0 2 4 - A d va n c ed M a n a g em en t I n si ght, I n c. 24