Pinto, Jeffrey K.; Kharbanda, Om P.: How to fail in project management – without really trying; in: Business Horizons, Vol. 39 (1996), No. 4, pp. 45-53.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0007-6813(96)90051-8
Since Pinto popularised the critical success factor and failure factor research, which established a large body of research I wanted to include this paper though it is a bit dated. Pinot & Kharbanda basically illustrate how one can ensure complete and utterly failure as an owner of an IT project:
- Ignore the environment (espy. stakeholders)
- Push a new technology in a market too quickly
- Don’t bother building fall back options
- When problems occur shoot the most visible one
- Let new ideas starve to death by inertia
- Don’t bother conducting feasibility studies
- Never admit project is a failure
- Over manage project managers and their team
- Never ever conduct post-failure reviews
- Never bother to understand project trade-offs
- Allow political expediency and infighting dictate crucial project decisions
- Make sure project is run by a weak leader