Question

What are the six major categories of factors that may influence the decision to terminate a project early? Provide examples of each.

Answer 1

The six major categories of factors that may influence the decision to terminate a project early are:

1. technology: The company wants to make use of a specific technology in data warehousing but in the middle of the project they realize that they do not have the required expertise to use the technology and deliver the project.

2. Budget: The budget of the project was 10000 USD but they can complete only 40% of the project with that budget. They will fail to find the investment to continue the project and this will lead to termination.

3. Schedule: The client asks for the project delivery in 20 days and the team can only complete 35% of the work in 20 days. The client will ask the team to terminate the project due to a tight schedule they have.

4. Resources: The company wants 5 people in the project management team and 10 members in the technical team with 4 information systems to complete the project. The company can only get 2 people for the project management and 6 members of the technical team with only 1 information system to execute the project. The execution will fail and the project will be terminated early.

5. Deviation to project scope: The team will start the project properly following the right project goals. After 45% completion they lose a track of the project progress and they deviate from the scope of the project. After putting a lot of effort they realize that the project is a failure and they will terminate the project early to avoid further losses.

6: Wrong Requirements: The team working on the project will fail to understand the project requirements properly and they will start working based on their assumptions. They will realize that they have worked on wrong requirements and the project will fail. The project gets terminated soon after that.