Project termination is one of the most serious decisions a project management team and its control board have to take. It causes frustration for those stakeholders who sincerely believed and in most cases still believe that the project could produce the results they expected, or still expect.

Projects fail for many reasons, some of which are outside the control of the project manager. External factors that can affect the outcome include a changing commercial environment, lack of support from senior management , or lack of co-operation from the project client. Internal factors include inadequate expertise within the project team, a lack of planning and management, poorly defined project objectives, and a failure to communicate effectively.

Main reasons for project termination:

• Project gets out of control: When project operation get way beyond control or when damages cannot be repaired anymore, you know it is time to terminate the project.

• Failure in testing process: Project may fail in testing process. if the project team members gave it all that they could and the project still could not succeed, putting an end to the project is a sensible choice rather than spending twice the energy and resources on it again.

• Expensive or does not meet company’s goal: Project Management team should make an estimate of the total cost of the project in the planning stage itself. Few differences in the budget is reasonable but if the costs goes out of control or beyond expected it's better to put an end to the project. Also, if the project does not go well with the strategic plan of the company, it should not be given the green signal.

• Important or priority project comes up: As business takes many projects there may come a scenario where multiple projects comes up. In such cases most important and bigger project should be given more consideration. So the smaller project may need to be terminated.

• Other reasons for project termination are as follows:

• Poor management skills

• Technical reasons

• Inadequate risk procedures and control measures implemented

• Lack of project planning, especially risk management

• Lack of management support

• Lack of customer support

• Skills shortages within the team, lack of comms, cooperation, time keeping, training and so forth.

• Lack of commitment, motivation and dedication towards accomplishment because of unrealistic timeframes, targets and expectations.