Rallying Support to Rescue the Project
When rescuing a project, you need to alter the project management deliverables and approaches used, to control the project. Both your rescue effort and your personal approach need to be different. Otherwise, you will find a project in trouble once again.
Although you may have to alter a number of control deliverables, there are a few which are typically changed as part of a rescue proposal to give confidence to key stakeholders like your sponsor and customer. This deliverables represent changes to your project approach, and can help you define a new path to success.
First is the communication plan. Rarely does a project go off the rails and overtly announced that journey. Communication needs to be improved. Seek to understand what the sponsor and customer need to gain confidence. As you rescue the project, they want to know exactly what is going on. Increase the frequency of communications if needed, at least until confidence is regained. For your project team, focused the communications plan on their roles in the information they need to construct the product of the project, and ensure they are in touch with your customers’ needs.
Another typical problem that plagues troubled projects is a lack of skilled resources. Often, they exist in the organization but have not been sufficiently applied to the project. A proposal to obtain or apply the needed resources will bolster the confidence of the project team as well as other stakeholders. As troubled projects typically don't deliver any business value at all, key stakeholders will want to see benefits as quickly as possible. I for one have never been ask to rescue a project slowly. To do this, it is a good idea to deliver business value in pieces, with the first deliveries of value being made as quickly as possible. This will not only move the business forward, but will help boost the confidence of your sponsor and customer. In addition it should also help your project team gain momentum. A re-work project schedule and project implementation plan should be part of the initial deliverables when a project is being rescued.
So let’s review:
• you want to alter your communications plan • your resourcing from the project and • the project delivery schedule
These tools can steer your project on a different path and rally the support of your stakeholders
Resetting the Perception of Your Project
There are two project control deliverables that are critical when navigating the rough seas facing a troubled project. After gaining stakeholder confidence you should work on two major project management control tools. In this video we’ll look at reconstructing your governance and risk plan.
Governance of a project details who are the decision-makers on the project, and the approach those decision-makers use when making decisions. Governance processes are likely to be ineffective when a project becomes trouble. So paying careful attention to governance early is an important activity. A good practice is to prepare a governance forecast, which is a set of questions or decisions that will be passed to the sponsor or governance committee, along with the information you could provide to assist them in making those decisions. Giving this heads up to leaders in the governance or sponsorship committee can help them think through the items they need to consider. That also gives them the opportunity to review the information you provide to them. If they want more information they can ask you for it. Giving you the time to prepare it. If preparing the information they requesting is difficult you can share that and jointly determine if the additional information will be worth the expended effort to obtain it.
The decision items to share with a governance board can vary greatly from project to project. However, common items include Go-no-go decision points for the project, when the project may be altered due to new news like a competitor’s new product release, or some new market research, direction confirmation of funding is cut, or the schedule exceeds the target deadline. Of course if you do not have a governance framework for the project, create one now. The framework should include information such as:
• The governance process throughout the project life-cycle. • Identify the decision-makers and decisions expected • To find the ultimate decision maker, • The expected escalation process.
Let’s switch our focus now and chat about the risk management plan. If you are looking to rescue a trouble project, I can assure you that one of three things is true. Either the:
• risk management plan did not work well, • it was not use at all or • Did not exist.
Otherwise your project would not be in trouble. List out the potential risks or issues that already exist and may become worst. Remember, risks are events that may occur, issues are happening now. Create risk and issue treatment actions, things that you can do to either reduce the probability of the risk occurring or reduce the impact.
For example let’s say you have two project stakeholders that have different perceptions about what the project will accomplish. To reduce the probability of this, additional review meetings with the two stakeholders early in the project can be deployed. To reduce the impact, extra options might be designed into the product of the project to provide a greater flexibility for stakeholders to use.
When rescuing a project it is common that stakeholders want to understand more, and one assurance that you will keep the project on getting bogged down again. The project governance and risk plans are your ticket to including stakeholders in the rescue effort.
Building New Traction with Stakeholders
Any time a project is rescued, the project objectives should be re-evaluated to assure they align with your stakeholders expectations. During a rescue, the project objectives are frequently modified based on the professed needs of the stakeholders.
As part of the recovery exercise, understanding and aligning stakeholder expectations is necessary. It is critical for the project manager to follow these steps:
• obtain current expectations from primary stakeholders • determine measurable business metrics • established targets to meet the business metrics • align key stakeholders around a single set of prioritise objectives and • communicate a green objectives to the project team
It is essential to key stakeholders are in alignment with the project objectives. If stakeholders are not aligned the project will be at risk again and with uncooperative stakeholders creating chaos for the project, and stakeholders having expectations that cannot be met. A very good tool to verify alignment in to establish the project objectives is a stakeholder analysis tool.
It is wise to go through this exercise even if you do not anticipate the project objectives to changes, is this tool defines and clearly documents the objectives and ensures alignment.
Here is what a stakeholder analysis worksheet looks like. I will explain each column and how the worksheet should be populated.
The first column is the stakeholder value, in other words what is important to the stakeholder. In this example, the stakeholder values are enabling growth, achieving productivity improvement, and cost reduction. We have listed the values and priority sequence with enabling growth being the most important value to the stakeholder.
The next 3 column represent the metric type. The description for how the value will be measured. In this example, we are using production throughput, manufacturing capacity, and quality output index. Now the tough part, we need to populate the cells to measure each value. At least one metric type must be completed for each value. As you can see we have populated five cells with the targets against which the value will be measured. The worksheet looks quite simple but can be challenging to populate. It may take a bit of negotiation between you and your stakeholders. However, gaining alignment on the project targets and values is critical. If alignment does not exist infighting and power struggles will play your project and rescuing the project will be nearly impossible.
Adjusting the Schedule
The basis of control for any project is the project schedule. We all probably heard the saying “garbage in, garbage out”. Now that you rescuing the project, it's time to get rid of any garbage that’s in your schedule. Here is what you need to do to ensure your schedule is rock solid.
Step one, verify the accuracy of the work breakdown structure and ensure is it the right level of detail. So what's the right level of detail? If the project can only get behind by one week, then all task need to be defined of 40 hours or less. If you can catch up from being two weeks behind, then 80 hours task are sufficient. It depends on the overall length of your project. Not sure how to create work breakdown structure? Check out the project management fundamentals course with bonnie biofore on lynder.com.
Step two, verify the estimates. Is that task really require only 20 hours? Or is 30 more realistic. Use the information from the original schedule to understand the variances and why they existed. If estimation was furthering the initial project planning phase, then re estimation based on lessons learned is essential.
Step three, ensure that the staff allocated to the project have the skills required to get the job done. You don't want people that are over or under skilled. Obtain agreement from your team members to ensure they are the right skill level and ensure your scheduling assumptions are realistic.
Step four if you're using the schedule to manage and report cost, verify the cost for each resource are accurate.
And the final step, consider doing things differently to get some quick wins on the board. Let me explain the concept that I called the victory path. The victory path means doing things out of the normal sequence to build confidence in the team and with the customer. The intent is to demonstrate the project team is capable of delivering value.
For example, if I'm upgrading all the computers for an organisation, we might decide that performing at change floor by floor is the most efficient way for the IT personnel to operate. However, in a rescue situation it might be best to change that approach to prove to the management team and indeed the project is viable. So the victory Path approach would be to carefully upgrade the PCs for some managers, followed by senior managers, then the core set of employees. This may mean the IT personnel will be temporarily travelling all over the place to different floors, different buildings, and even different cities as they upgrade the management computers. Clearly this is not the most efficient way to operate. However, if management sees the value via their desktop being upgraded and at the cut over was smooth for them they will then become advocates for the project. Once the management team refreshes completed you can then revert to normal operations and complete the remainder of the PC upgrades for the core set of employees on a floor by floor basis.
As you can see, the schedule contains several key components that should be re-examined for an effective project recovery. They are:
• verify the work breakdown structure • verify the estimates • ensure you have the right resources • verify resource costs • consider a victory path and • get rid of the garbage
A solid schedule can give you and your stakeholders’ confidence that also clearly demonstrates the way forward to success.
Resetting Your Tools Before you move forward with your project it's a good idea to look at the project management tools that were used in the project ensure they will work for you going forward the key is to make sure whatever you use for the project works as a whole to help you achieve the project goals the triggers to be practical but also floral good project management practice involves making sure you are control tools fit together for example an assumption listed in your early project documentation should either be confirmed or result in a risk in your risk management plan until it can be confirmed if it mosquito bite on your left and you just put pound on your hand cover all of your exposed skin same with a project that walls you you should work across your whole project they integrate into integration will help you keep your project from needing any further rescue soul have to reset your communication risk client you want to reconstruct your other project control tools for example risk treatments will coffer additional time to be allocated to task for additional reviews protesting the be applied make sure these appear on your project schedule so you actually have the time and resources allocated to fulfil those commitments after checking to ensure things are in sync You update your wrist plan and schedule you should examine your change management practice many projects requiring rescue had not appropriately applied change management practices changes enter into the project will appropriate examination the impact of projects now assessed in the consequences crippled project change management examine suggestions for adjustments to your project and ensures the impact of those suggestions are understood a controlled change process that ensures the changes either denied it was communicated to all interested parties or the changes approved the change should then be reflected in an updated project scope or schedule cost whichever combination of those as appropriate projects in recovery should be kept as simple as possible it may be necessary to accept the proposed change that should only happen if your customers business changes or your team find a better way to accomplish the project objectives even when the reasons for a change are evident good change management discipline should be applied that way to full the change can be tested and good communication occur so all relevant stakeholders understand it can support the change lastly a review of the following management plan for your project should be conducted as we just discussed making the project as simple as possible as key to a successful project rescue quality management defines the level of excellent quality that needs to be delivered and how those needs will be tested or verified as you recover your project carefully examine the quality tasks on your project ensure your planes do not coffer a quality product is cleaner or more refine them is necessary you should ensure that the necessary quality aspects of your project product well-defined understood and tested rolling often during your project there are several other project management control tools available however the tools discussed here are essential doing project recovery making sure your project control tools what you need and work with each other will help you complete your project successfully
Holding a Rekickoff Meeting
The best majority of project that are successfully recovered involve a significant change in focus on management direction along with the change in management processes rollers will flyers these changes are conceived and planned people have a change in perspective and many people doubt whether the changes being discussed will actually happen and approach for overcoming these issues is the Richard Gough meaning the Richard Gough meaning confounds the mission or alter admission of the project but also discusses changes to the project approach management techniques and tools in the priority of business improvements there are envisioned when the project is completed more importantly it gives the senior leadership or providing guidance to the project the chance to reaffirm their dedication to the project and its team members the Richard Gough meaning as a way to generate enthusiasm and the via public discussion of those changes in turn is the project manager you can talk about changes to how the project will be managed what the new schedule will be and what you were modify governments tools will be used to monitor and control project these messages coming directly from the miles of senior leaders and you is the project manager can make for a very successful relaunch of a troubled project the typical agenda for a weaker Gough meaning is review of objectives in organisational dedication to outcomes rescuing projects often involves adjustments to objectives or the priorities of the desired objectives this agenda item gives the management team upfront the ability to dispel any rumours about where the project is going on also affirms the sponsors believe that the project is to viable and achievable review project tools and governments approaches as discussed earlier any changes to how the project will be managed should be discussed only in the Richard Gough meaning discussion of lingering issues and risks as the project is in rescue mode it is a certainty that issues a risk will continue to exist this will help ensure realistic and careful approaches to project execution are maintained reviews and a project schedule any team changes and communication expectations as far as a base for how expectations will be shared in project information will be exchanged going forward reinforce success criteria and celebration points to close the Richard Gough meaning a high note reinforce other project will help or improve things discuss the project is a journey and that you should collectively recognise 1.7 ensuring are reached the final milestones for small celebrations and larger celebrations when certain products and of course the final product is produced it is an easy item to overlook but the Richard Gough meaning is pivotal to ensuring good energy is regained for your project