The program was unable to establish clear management processes across the five countries. Due to this, procedures for hiring staff members were a nightmare to follow, and contractors often were not paid on time. Soon the work schedule began to slip. Despite the implementation challenges, the international organization and the country governments agreed to launch all aspects of the program simultaneously, without pilot testing to learn what worked and what did not. Eventually, the program failed. This example is not an isolated occurrence. A recent performance review of the multilateral World Bank Group, undertaken by its Independent Evaluation Group, shows that almost a quarter of World Bank–funded projects and programs have failed. Project failures are not confined to the development world. In 2004 Hartman and Ashrafi found that the project failure rate is above 60 percent for construction, engineering, and other technology projects, despite all the advances in project management theory and practice. Failure is far from the minds or desires of either development partners or the developing-country governments, yet despite their efforts, failures persist. Why? In some cases, the explanation lies in the difficulty of the interventions and the limitations of the governments involved. Many development projects touch on central aspects of society, including health, education, the private sector, and the treasury. At the same time, the international community is placing greater demands on those governments to “do more with less” and to show that results are being achieved with donor funds. The clashing demands can result in failure. Most government projects involve many processes, people, and stakeholders. Demands are high, but resources are limited. That failures happen should not surprise; it is amazing that any projects actually succeed.
What is project failure? Failure and success are often thought of as alternative, binary conditions, but the dichotomy is misleading. For example, the collapse of a bridge is an event; that a bridge does not collapse is an ongoing state. Failure, in this sense, is the culmination of a series of events that led up to the collapse. Many avenues of failure are possible, but in most cases, one chain of events leads to failure. Thus, poor planning in the design of the bridge, substandard materials, and too much stress on the bridge at a particular moment cause the collapse. Some and perhaps most of those elements may have been pres-
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Fail-Safe Management