Projects fail for a variety of reasons. Especially technology projects have a low success rate. Typically more than half of them are considered a failure. But it does not have to end that way.
As soon as a project is identified as in trouble you can start thinking about project recovery. This sentence already states a very important precondition for a successful project recovery process, namely identifying a project as troubled. It takes a great deal of political savvy and courage to admit that a project is in serious trouble.
Results of a Project Recovery
A project recovery process can have three possible outcomes:
1) Delivery of the project without significant changes in scope, time and/or costs. This is very rarely and only possible when trouble is identified early and action is taken immediately.
2) Delivery of the project with significant changes in scope, time and/or costs. There will be an impact on the business case.
3) Termination of the project because costs and benefits or value are no longer aligned. Note that termination does not necessarily mean that everything done up to this point should be written off as sunk costs. Some part might be salvageable.
The Project Recovery Process
A typical project recovery process consists of the five phases below.
1) The Mandate Phase
The purpose of the mandate phase is simple. The project should be identified as troubled, and a project recovery manager should be identified. The mandate of the project recovery manager should be defined clearly. Especially when the recovery manager is working with the current or new project manager instead of replacing him/her. Afterwards, the project recovery manager and his/her should be introduced to everybody that needs to know. The project recovery manager can be an internal role, but there are a number of good reasons to hire an external project recovery manager.
2) The Review Phase
Now that we have a clear mandate, we enter the review phase, which is a critical assessment of the project’s existing status. You will look at what went wrong and what can be corrected rather than looking for someone to blame. A project review is all about the probability of project success. A project review will give you a good understanding of the current status of the project and how it is on track to deliver against your definition of project success on three levels:
1) Project delivery success
2) Product or service success
3) Business success
You will find a detailed outline of such a review under my project review service. Note that if the project has a technical component, the project recovery manager should have a strong technical background so that he or she can talk with the technical team on its own level, gaining trust as someone who understands the challenges. This must be coupled with an independent critical eye questioning the direction. Many aspects of technology development can contribute to, or even cause trouble on a project.
3) The Tradeoff & Negotiation Phase
Hopefully, by this point, you have the necessary information for decision making as well as the team’s support for the recovery. It may be highly unlikely that the original requirements can still be met without some serious tradeoffs. You must now work with the team and determine the tradeoff options that you will present to your stakeholders.
When the project first began, the constraints were most likely the traditional triple constraints. Time, cost and scope were the primary constraints and tradeoffs would have been made on the secondary constraints of quality, risk, value and image/reputation. When a project becomes troubled, stakeholders know that the original budget and schedule may no longer be valid. The project may take longer and may cost significantly more money than originally thought. As such, the primary concerns for the stakeholders as to whether or not to support the project further may change to value, quality and image /reputation. See «The reverse triple constraint of troubled projects» for more background on this.
After defining the tradeoffs, the project recovery manager is ready for stakeholder negotiations provided that there still exists a valid business case. If the review phase indicates that the recovery is not possible and a valid business case does not exist, then there may be no point to negotiate with the stakeholders unless there are issues with which the project recovery manager is not familiar.
4) The Intervention Phase
Assuming the stakeholders have agreed to a recovery plan, you are now ready to start the intervention phase of the project. This means:
– Briefing the team on the outcome of the negotiations
– Making sure the team learns from past mistakes
– Introducing the team to the stakeholders‘ agreed-upon recovery plan including the agreed-upon milestones
– Introducing any changes to the way the project will be managed
– Fully engaging the project sponsor as well as the key stakeholders for their support
– Identifying any changes to the roles and responsibilities of the team members
– Restore team confidence
«We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.» – Albert Einstein
The way I set up the delivery part of the project with my team(s) at almost every intervention phase I start I described in «A simple and effective project delivery framework«.
5) The Transition Phase
As soon as the project is in a normal state again the project recovery manager (when he/she does not have the project manager role) can transfer the responsibility for the recovered project and closes the recovery process. When the project recovery manager also has the role of project manager he/she can decide to close the recovery process and manage the project as if it was a freshly started project or keep the project in a recovery process until the project is finished.