Diagnosing failure in Key initiatives/projects

One of the activities I have been doing over the past 15 years is to diagnose reasons of failure in key/strategic initiatives and projects., and I found that kind of experience is worth sharing with my friends and colleagues.

There is another version of this experience which deals with troubleshooting technical problems, but I will leave that one aside despite some overlap between the two.

Focusing on the key initiatives/projects failures, here is a list of most popular causes of failure for your review and discussion

1. Failure to understand/articulate the TRUE needs, requirements and expectations of the key stakeholders
2. Failure to negotiate/compromise conflicts/contradictions of these stakeholder needs/requirements and expectations
3. Failure to translate the needs/requirements into clear specifications that form the basis of contractual obligations with the suppliers/vendors
4. Failures in execution of the initiative/project and managing the delivery of outcomes, results and deliverables
5. Invalid assumptions, exceptions and exemptions that go unnoticed and/or invalidated throughout the project/initiative execution. 
6. Failures to understand the underlying processes and workflow logistics resulting in failures to link technical aspects of the initiative/project to the real business logic and its governing rules. 
7. Shortfalls in inherent 'out-of-the-box' capabilities of the selected solution elements in addressing the articulated requirements of the initiative/project. 
8. Underestimation of efforts needs, skills, resources, time, and money
9. Adoption of the "big-bang" deployment philosophy trying to deliver everything in the first run, versus the gradual, evolutionary phased approach focusing on quick wins, small but sustainable achievements and ongoing improvement process.
10. Technical failures in the products, services and their implementation in the key initiative/projects
11. Poor quality input data ( incomplete, inaccurate, out of date, contradicting, ... ) resulting the "garbage-in/garbage-out" syndrome 
12. Loss of momentum in the key initiatives/projects due to the above problems resulting in declining executive support and enthusiasm. 
13. Failures in corporate communications across the organization to involve and enable all needed parties to participate actively and strongly in the initiative/project. 
14. Lack of enough motivation/incentive schemes at the "working level' ranks in the organization. 
15. Lack of management/leadership merits of ownership, accountability, empowerment, negotiation and delegation skills and practices.