A common reason for your recipe failing at this step is:
There is an existing project with the same name
Project names in Replicon have to be unique, so you have to ensure that new projects created via your recipe has unique names.
Also, do take note that if the project manager shares the exact same name with another user in Replicon, recipes that rely upon the user's name as shown, instead of user's unique URI, may assign the wrong project manager to the project in Replicon.