What are the trends in the failure/success/challenged projects?Overall, the number of successful projects is rising. The ratio of challenged projects is also rising, and the ratio of failed ones is decreasing.
Also, the average project size is decreasing, which may be the primary cause of these good results.
What are the reasons for past projects to be success and what are main reasons for failure?
The main reason for project success is executive support, which has become the most important only recently. Other reasons are user involvement, an experienced project manager, clear business objectives and minimized scope.
The reasons for failure is, generally, the lack of these.
What are the suggested recipes for success according to the report (see also last page)?
A small project has the best chance of being successful. The CHAOS recipe recommends no more than 4 people, at most 4 months of time, and less than $500000 (about ⅓ million €) in budget.
Compare the previous answer with the recipe from 1994: http://standishgroup.com/sample_research/chaos_1994_4.php. What are the differences? Can you explain them?
Aside from the difference in writing style, the newer report is much more specific – it gives actual numbers instead of vague terms. This is understandable, since there is more research data now.
The old “recipe” instruct to release early and often, to break the project into smaller pieces. The new recipe just calls for smaller projects. The report says (near the end of page 4) that “the act of minimizing scope leads to greater success than that of creating smaller milestones”. This is probably a result of more data as well.
The last difference is that the old recipe mentions that project managers should learn from their mistakes and bad luck. This is missing from the newer version, either because the Standish Group didn't have enough data to support it, or just because they didn't find a good cooking pun to go with it.
What skills a project manager should have? How do you judge your skills if you were assigned to such a task?
- Business skills. Here, I would fail. I do not have business skills.
- Technical skills. I can safely say my technical skills are good enough for leading a big project.
- Project management skills. I have some experience with project management, but I definitely need more. That is partly the reason why I am taking this course.
- Decision skills. I am able to make firm decisions if I am given authority.
- Process skills. I do not have experience in this field, although I plan to improve this.
- Detail skills.This is my strong point; I have no problems thinking about both the big picture and details.
- Organization skills. In school projects, I tend to lead and organize work. I would say my organization skills are above average.
- Communication skills. I'm average in this regard.
