I’ve recently had some discussions around recovering troubled projects and thought I would write about a few points from the session I presented at Project World this fall. I’m always intrigued with client answers to these crucial questions.

First I’d like to describe what I mean by a troubled project. Some people will call them Crisis projects — but a crisis is actually something different… The Red Cross would respond to a crisis. An Oil spill that requires immediate action to avoid or limit environmental impacts is a crisis.

I’m referring to a troubled project:

A project that seems gridlocked with no clear means of meeting goals.

You may have resources on the team that say they don’t understand their role or how they play into the process. There could be issues causing gridlock. The company may have already spent their budget on a fixed price project and they are not complete. Often overtime has been going on for quite some time, and the team and client are frustrated. Sr Management is engaged to see how they can fix the project. There could be questions of how do we recover this investment from the people funding the project…. you get the idea.

It is important to get all leadership moving in the same direction on the approach. If your leadership is not on board with the approach you are going to struggle to get the project moving. Very early in an engagement it is crucial to ground on the direction and the easiest way to find out is to ask the Sponsor and Sr. Leadership to place a weight on the following…

What strategy do you want followed:

1. Schedule is King
2. Cost is King
3. Quality is King

While picking one of the above strategies to focus on, it is also important to protect future work… The interesting thing is that the current and future condition of the company are coming into play at this time as a project like this is going to have an immediate and long term impact on the company.

Let’s look at some examples of why each could be chosen and some management tactics:

Schedule is King:

In a Program environment where different projects need to line up on dates it is very important to try and hold integration dates to minimize each team trying to hit a moving target. Aligning the projects to help them connect is a major benefit to the overall program.

I normally see a swat team approach where top talent is added to the team to resolve open issues. Caution: adding Jr. resources normally hurts the team.

Changing where the team sits to be co-located sometimes helps if it can be done without causing other issues.
Shared resources can be off loaded from their other responsibilities to help move the timelines.
Developer machines could be upgraded if that is causing delays — this is always a balancing act and is not always applicable.

A road block buster can add wonders to timelines if they have the authority to make positive changes.

Creating a culture of asking for help if you are stuck for x amount of time… you don’t want to wait until the end of the day to hear someone was stuck.

Basically you identify what are the slow downs and you resolve the issues so they are no longer present.

Cost is King:

Reducing scope, features, and re-thinking training are required as the company is getting into an undesirable financial position.

It may make sense to share environments if the scheduling will work. i.e. UAT with Training environment.
Look at the interim states between iterations and see if there can be cost measures by not making each interim step prod like quality. i.e. if it is going to change next iteration anyway so don’t boil the ocean working on making it perfect.

Measure what is adding value at each step. And decide to lessen the rigor on steps that do not add value at this stage.
Travel is often cut and I’ve seen screen sharing and skype-like tools helping to keep costs down.

Quality is King:

A company who is providing something for a client could say since we are late, and or over budget it is imperative that the customer be super impressed with the final result. To give it a ‘it was worth waiting for’ reaction once it is up and running. If the client says it cost too much, it was late, and it was not a good implementation this is the 3 strikes you are out scenario… why would they ask you to do more project work?

Quality in this sense speaks to the richness of the experience with the application and how to you deal with the end users. Have you created something that is intuitively impressive? The fact the the app does what it claims to do is a minimal entry… people now expect to enjoy the process as much as get benefit out of the service.

In all of the above strategies, ask what the implications are of not following the process completely. I’ve seen some companies that are brought to a just-get-it-done as fast as possible state… so that is clear that not all process is mandatory. I’ve also seen some companies where there future work is dependent on certain quality and process standards. It is a very good question to ask — don’t assume either end of the spectrum.

Sr Management wants a plan to bring the project back in line… and they are also concerned with saving face and protecting the future work. I had a President of a company give me his client’s thoughts on troubled projects. The end client said that troubled projects crop up some times. When they do crop up his desire was to see an over-reaction…

i.e. a plan so direct that it is obvious to the client that all measures are being taken.

Of course please ensure all aspects of the plan will actually help get the project team out of hot water and the plan needs to sustain the team… It was interesting perspective from a client side Senior Manager on a troubled project.

I would love to hear about your troubled project details and what worked great – and even what was tried that did not have the expected results.  Leave a comment below.

Use the comment section below to share your troubled project stories.

Want to get more helpful project management insights like this directly in your inbox? Subscribe to the Managing Projects newsletter (see subscribe in right side menu).

Ron is a Project Manager and occasional blogger with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith

Check out the contributors page.