The Death of Autonomous Projects

The rate of failure for complex projects in terms of time, cost, and quality is now approaching 100%. This extraordinary rate of failure is not a failure of project management per se , but the failure of the organisations that support them. Projects are not autonomous vehicles capable of independently delivering the required outcomes of the organisation but are utterly dependent on those organisations for the necessary resources, support, and mandate. The modern organisation, in turn, is increasingly plagued by hyper-bureaucracy. This has led to bloated and corrupted functions that serve their own interests above those of the organisation. The only purpose of such functions is to survive and, wherever possible, continue to grow. In doing so they consume more resources from the operational parts of the organisation that build, operate and run the core business. This has proceeded far beyond what is necessary and has now devolved into an institutionalised protection racket.