<p>Most importantly, why did it fail?</p>

<p>What I'm looking for here is pathologies that anyone, whether new to the team or just waking up one day,can spot.</p>

A project that had no end. No one knew when it was finished. All we knew was that we had to keep doing whatever that we were doing. And yes sadly it was just as vague as I explained it.
Did it fail. In my opinion it did since we never saw what happened to it at the end, we were moved on to another project, and you can say it faded into the night.
Why? Everything opposite of the 7 project management body of knowledge.