Resistance to change
Many people will be stuck in their ways, for example if a client has been using a particular software tool for a long time, making them use a new one may not go down well. One way around this is training, if you teach the new users how to use the new software. You can also use motivation techniques to try and make the users happier to use your new product.
Motivation
Poorly motivated staff can have a massive impact on the project, for example team members who don't want to be there they will do much less work and at a poorer standard than highly motivated employees. It will also take longer to complete tasks which costs you more money. There are several different methods of motivating your staff. Monetary methods such as bonus or payrise is an obvious way to increase motivation. There are also cheaper ways to motivate your staff, these can be better since they don't affect your cash flow as much such as: extra praise, better working environment or free meals.
Tools
If you don't have the tools available it will be much harder and less efficient to complete your project, for example a ICT company may not have the correct software for the task, a woodwork company may not have the correct tool.
Finance
Finance is obvious, if you don't have the cash available to complete your project you will fail, you may have to look at getting more money in the form, for example getting a loan from the bank. You must ensure that you have the cash available to cover all predicted costs, plus extra for any unpredictable or uncontrollable costs that may arise.
Skills
If your team do not have the skills needed to complete the project you will have people doing nothing, you may have to outsource with external recruitment companies which costs you a lot of money and negatively impacts your cash flow. You may even have to employ new team members which is also a expensive and time consuming process.
Communication
Communication problems can completely break a project, for example: If you are relying on the internet to communicate between teams and the internet goes down on one end the teams will no longer be able to communicate.
Time
In business time is money, when you plan your project unexpected problems will arise and these will set you back time. With out a suitable amount of extra time you will simply not be able to cope with the extra work. If the time scale is too short anyway the quality of the final product will likely suffer since the team are being rushed to complete their tasks.
External factors
External factors are uncontrollable, for example, changes in government legislation can have a massive effect on a business's costs. Another example is the recession, many projects failed as a result because they could not predict it.
Managing expectations
When you are communicating with the client it is important that you keep them grounded and realistic about what to expect from the final product.
