The Biggest Cause of Most Project Failures

As a former senior executive of Synchrony in Costa Mesa, Delaena Kalevor helped launch several points of sale and digital products. One of Delaena Kalevor's responsibilities at Synchrony was project management, and part of being a successful project manager is avoiding major causes of project failures. A lack of clear goals is commonly agreed as the biggest one.

According to KPMG, seven out of 10 organizations have experienced a failed project in the last 12 months. In the United States alone, project failures cost organizations $122 million for every $1 billion that is invested. In a 2017 study conducted by the Project Management Institute’s Pulse of the Profession, 37 percent of executive leaders claimed that a lack of clear goals was the primary reason behind their project failures.

One of the biggest responsibilities of a project manager is to plan the project, which gives it clearly-defined goals, as well as timelines and budgets. Without clear goals, there are no performance indicators to measure if the project is heading towards success. This means that it would be hard, if not impossible, to tell if work is complete or leading to a waste of time and resources.

A Brief History of Soccer

An experienced financial executive, Delaena Kalevor recently served as the VP of strategic initiatives with California-based Synchrony and is now an independent consultant working with institutional investors. Outside his career in finance Delaena Kalevor enjoys sports, including soccer.

The sport of soccer, commonly known as football in most parts of the world, is perhaps the most popular sport played in the world today. This sport has an incredibly long history, with some experts even dating its origins back to ancient times, as far back as 2500 BCE. It appears that in these times, the Greeks, Chinese, and even Egyptians participated in various types of games that involved balls that were moved by the foot. However, in many of these games, hands and sticks were also used to control the ball. Of these ancient games, the most relevant to modern-day soccer is an ancient Chinese game known as Tsu'Chu, played during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE).

Following this Chinese game, which may have originally served as a training exercise for soldiers, other similar games began to develop around the world. Eventually, modern-day soccer began to emerge and be codified in the public schools of Great Britain in the early part of the 19th century. It is the English, as well, who are credited with developing the first standardized rules for the game with the development of the Cambridge Rules in 1863, including banning the use of the hands and prohibiting tripping your opponents. These were picked up by the Football Association, newly formed at the time, which still runs the English FA Cup to this day.

Interestingly, the term “association football” was originally developed in England to differentiate this sport from similar games that had already been established, like rugby football. Eventually, a short-hand of this term became common, “soccer,” meaning “one who plays association football,” as “socca” was a common abbreviation for association at the time. However, today most of the world calls this sport football (with the exception mainly of the United States).