I have a different view of the reasons that companies fail at project management.

5. Project Managers are not well versed in what they are managing. More often than not, these people do not understand the work and PD that needs to take place when a project is being started, nor do they think that there will be problems, because they believe they can tell a programmer to do it, and pow- they can crap out a solution in 5 minutes.

4. Project managers tend to take the heat and put it on the programmers or the people peforming the project because they don't know how to explain to a customer that what they have asked for is out of scope until the second part of the project. Project managers tend to have the inability to say "no"

3. Project managers even though they collect the requirements hardly ever discuss with technical representatives time frames to get the piece done before programming in the due dates. I have seen poor managers not understand the scope of several pieces of their projects, and completely blow their times because of not comprehending the needs.

2. The inability to take technical requirements and pass them along without confusing them. I don't know how many times I have sat in on a conference call with a PM and the PM made an ass of themselves because they failed to use the appropriate technical jargon. Here is an example: "What we need to do on Monday is format the hard files and then put Windows 2K Server on them then load the appropriate applications." Instead of telling the team to load "W2k Server with Sp4 & hot fixes and install apache with php." What the hell is a hard file?

1. The program manager attempts to follow manufacturing methodologies in RAD or SDLC environments. Did you ever have the explain to a PM why you just can't hammer a piece of code into a hole? Or how you just can't change the production line in software in a snap without consequences to the main application? Or explain why regression testing needs to be done on any application patches? I have, and the looks that I get are that worthy of a MasterCard commercial.