The study, being conducted by Vital Smarts Inc., a Provo, Utah-based training firm, found that project managers' inability to talk to people about five often-occurring negative situations frequently leads to failure. The preliminary findings were made public Tuesday at Delivering Project Excellence, a conference for project managers.
According to David Maxfield, director of research at Vital Smarts, the five situations include the following:
-- Setting arbitrary deadlines and inadequate resources that "set up a project to fail."
-- Failing to provide the necessary leadership, political clout or energy for a project.
-- Skirting or manipulating the project priority-setting process.