Exploring Project Complexity through Project Failure Factors: Analysis of Cluster Patterns Using Self-Organizing Maps

Table 12

Summary of clusters interpretation.

Cluster number	Focus attention	Description
Cluster 1	Project factors, specially customer’s requirements inaccurate, incomplete or not defined.	Cluster 1 is featured as the pattern of respondents that gives very low influence over the projects failure to the factors included in the questionnaire. They just only attribute some influence to the project and the organization categories.; The most remarked factors are (highly rated factors that are equal or above the general mode): (i) C4: Disagreement of conflict of interest among departments; (ii) C17: Project staff changes; (iii) C3: Customer’s requirements inaccurate, incomplete or not defined; (iv) C5: Inaccurate cost estimations; (v) C10: Badly defined specifications
Cluster 2	Both the project and the organization, remarking the influence of inaccurate cost estimations.	Cluster 2 attributes the highest influence to the project category, followed by the factors related to the organization and, to a lesser extent, to the project manager and, team members and external categories.; All the factors related to the organization are scored with the same importance as the general mode.; Regarding the project category, all the factors are rated high or medium, excepting C9 (lack of previous identification of legislation). The stress is specially put in C5 (inaccurate cost estimations).
Cluster 3	Project, organization and, project manager and team members factors are all considered at the highest value.	Cluster 3 is featured as the pattern of respondents that consider the project manager and team members factors as the highest value, at the same level as the project and the organization factors.
Cluster 4	Project factors mainly, but organization and project manager and team members factors are also very important.	Cluster 4 is characterized because it associates a medium influence to project, organization, and project manager and team member almost equally. All the factors are rated equal to the mode, except three: (i) C6: Inaccurate time estimations (rated below the mode); (ii) C9: Lack of previous identification of legislation (rated above the mode); (iii) C16: Project requirements deficiently documented (rated below the mode)
Cluster 5	Project and organization	Cluster 5 associates a very high influence on the projects failure to the categories of project and organization. The main difference with cluster 3 is that cluster 5 attributes less importance to the project manager and team members category.