All too often engineers and project teams focus on building things', and they tend to see the key goals as meeting the project cost and schedule targets. We frequently compound the problem by unknowingly rewarding engineers for building bigger, more complex, more bullet proof' and hence more costly things'. Unfortunately the end result all too often ends up being a disappointment in terms of business performance. The term shareholder value' may never have entered the discussions during the development process._x000D_
This paper deals with the fundamental issues, which tend to pre-dispose new developments to success or to failure._x000D_
As project management concepts are not particularly complex, it begs the question why is it that the failure rate of new developments is so high? It is argued that the answer lies more in people behaviour issues than in project management tools and processes.