Lacking leadership. Although we often have a difficult time defining good leadership, it's one of those things that we usually know when we see it. If a project lacks external and/or internal leadership, chances are good that performance will flag.

Inadequate technical skills. While this is not the most common cause of project failure, it's often a factor. Some teams are assigned without the background and training they need to succeed. Since we usually staff projects with whoever is available at the time rather than with the best fit, critical skills are sometimes missing.

Too many meetings. Project teams that spend too much time in meeting rooms are often doing so to make up for inadequate planning. Because they haven't thought things out in advance, they try to coordinate everything on the fly.

If you want to prevent project catastrophes, early problem detection is the most important thing you can do. By the time an impending disaster becomes obvious, recovery will be quite difficult.