Your research focus for this course is to review business publications including the Wall Street Journal, major newspapers and business publications to find three in-depth articles that describe an example of a failing or failed project.  For each project, research two or three additional articles that describe the project at an earlier date or later date so you can track the emergence and resolution of the factors which caused the failure. Create a research paper to answer the questions Why do Projects Fail?. Your choice of failures can be from an industry or functional area of interest to you or they can just be highly publicized projects (like Bostons Big Dig or the Challenger Space Shuttle).
Your paper should follow the following outline:

Introduction summarizing what you learned from your research
Failure 1

Brief description of project and primary reasons for failure
Reasons cited for project failure
Discussion of what could have been done to avoid the failure

Failure 2

Brief description of project and primary reasons for failure
Reasons cited for project failure
Discussion of what could have been done to avoid the failure

Failure 3

Brief description of project and primary reasons for failure
Reasons cited for project failure
Discussion of what could have been done to avoid the failure

You will be graded on the following criteria:

30% “ Completeness of research. Were the articles of sufficient detail and discussed topics related to the project management?
20% “ Analysis of the causes of failure.
20% “ Spelling, grammar, and organization of the paper.
30% “ Quality of discussion of what could have been done to avoid the failure. This section must include specific examples of project management topics and project management skills discussed in this course.

Your final paper is due at the end of this week.