Learn how to turn a troubled project around by using a system for assessing current project status and implementing the steps needed to save it.
Part I: Recognition, assessment, and recovery
Projects often go crazy and veer off track. Project managers can make project course corrections by developing a structured process that lets them assess the situation, determine whether recovery is possible, and turn around the project. This guide for project managers is designed to help with the assessment and recovery of a troubled project.
Let's start by explaining the key concepts and terms you should know before we focus on project recovery strategies.
| Key Concepts |
| Assessment: The structured review of the project and project plans. It is similar to what the Project Management Institute (PMI) calls an audit. |
| Recovery: An attempt to rescue something useful from the project. The best-case scenario is to recover the entire project, possibly with a scheduling delay. But when saving the entire project isn't possible, project managers need to focus on salvaging anything that will result in continued business and financial benefit. In other words, we need to prevent total project failure. |
| Troubled project: The meaning of a troubled project is relative, because it depends on the situation. In some cases, no slippage at all is allowable in the schedule, so there is little tolerance for schedule variance. In cases of internal projects, more schedule tolerance may be acceptable. It is difficult to come up with a comprehensive definition. The situation will escalate to troubled status when one of the major stakeholders (customer, supplier, sponsor, etc.) can no longer tolerate the situation -- in other words, when the variance trends have exceeded acceptable levels of tolerance and the project is heading for failure. |
| Rapid: Rapid means that time is critical. The causes of the project's trouble must be determined as quickly as possible. The consequences of total failure may be very expensive. The customer's business and the relationship with the customer are at risk. We need to conduct the assessment and recovery process as quickly as possible in relationship to the project demographics. Obviously, smaller projects take less time to assess and recover, if possible, than do larger, more complex ones. |
Warning signs
Here are examples of symptoms that contribute to the need for rapid assessment and rescue:
- No one on the project knows when the project will finish.
- The project's deliverables are loaded with errors and defects.
- Team members are working involuntary excessive overtime.
- Management is unable to forecast a project completion date or estimate to completion.
- Requirements keep changing.
- Goals and constraints are inconsistent.
- Dysfunctional communication exists.
- The customer has lost confidence that the project team will ever deliver the promised deliverables.
- The morale of the project team is very low.
- The team is experiencing irresolvable conflicts.
- Interpersonal relations between project team members are highly strained.
- Management is considering the cancellation of the project.
- The customer is threatening to take legal action against the performing organisation.
- Many work packages have been 90 percent complete for what seems like forever.
In some cases, termination is the best option
Rescuing a project is not always possible or even desirable. One of the major objectives of the assessment process is to determine whether a recovery is possible or not. The following are examples of situations where recovery is not possible or desirable. In such cases, we should terminate the project:
- We cannot achieve the business benefits associated with the project.
- The political environment within the performing organisation is no longer supportive.
- The sponsor has dropped the project and no replacement is apparent.
- The business needs that the project is trying to satisfy are no longer valid.
- Major technological changes have occurred that render the proposed deliverable obsolete.
- Litigation is in process.
- Market conditions have changed.
A spectrum of variances
Project managers know that variances are likely to occur on any project. In fact, a project manager should be very concerned if there are no schedule or cost variances. Zero variances exist only in a fantasy world. The question is not whether we have variances or not; the question is whether these variances are acceptable or not.
A project with acceptable variances is within the zone of normal project management. In this zone, normal project management practices are applied, for example, fast tracking, crashing, and working overtime. On the other hand, if the variances are just too extreme, the project is a strong candidate for termination, not recovery. Our main objective in the assessment phase is to determine whether the project is eligible for recovery.
