We've looked at the warning signs and we've talked about what a project manager needs to do to avoid trouble from getting out of hand, but what do you do when your project has already struck the metaphorical iceberg?

More than anything else, righting a troubled project means establishing order and control after things have spiralled out of control. In that sense, the project manager is a lot like a police officer showing up at the scene of a crime after the crime has been committed. It's not that the police officer is there to solve the crime right on the spot, so much as it is the officer's main job to re-establish a sense of order where it has broken down.

Where a project is concerned, the project manager needs to focus on the following in getting the project back on track:

1. Stopping any financial hemorrhaging. Getting control over what's being spent is absolutely essential to keeping the project afloat.
   
2. Getting essential work done. There are tasks that are critical to the functioning of the project - these need to take top priority.
   
3. Validating the project's purpose. There are reasons why the project was launched - confirming if these are still true is essential if the project is to continue.
   
4. Capturing the project's true status. You won't really know what's broken and where resources need to be directed until you know how things stand.
   
5. Fixing what's broken. This step requires the input of the project's various stakeholders (team members, sponsors and bankers), who you're asking to realistically assess the project's condition while buying into what needs to be done to repair it.

Depending on the outcome of the first four steps listed above, you may not get around to fixing what's broken. Instead, the project may not be recoverable and it may be in the best interests of all involved to manage it through to its termination.

More information: The Long Island chapter of the Project Management Institute has incorporated portions of Jim Foreman's comments on how to move a troubled project to recovery in their January 2007 minutes.

Labels: project management

- posted by Ironman at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Home |

When it comes to identifying projects in trouble, the key warning signs of personnel turnover, sponsor turnover and funding uncertainty are really late signals that confirm that the project is going off track. By and large, these things only happen after real problems have begun to entrench themselves.

So what causes a project to go off track?

ESI International's Jim Foreman lists the following:

1. Drifting away from standards.
2. Frequent change of direction by management.
3. Inability to determine current status.

More than anything else, these things indicate that the project is moving toward an "out-of-control" condition in the quality sense. Left unchecked, these things will result in a series of building issues with the project's stakeholders (team members, sponsors, and customers), that will ultimately destabilize the project and compromise its potential for success.

After a point, the project's stakeholders will simply vote with their feet and dollars and go elsewhere (the key warning signs that confirm the project is in trouble.)

It falls to the project manager to stay on top of developing issues during the course of the project. While it's not uncommon for there to be variance from a perfectly-controlled situation, the problems that can doom a project are best avoided before they reach an out-of-control condition.

In a nutshell, that's the real job of the project manager!

More information: The Long Island chapter of the Project Management Institute has incorporated portions of Jim Foreman's comments on identifying and dealing with problems in projects in their January 2007 minutes.

Labels: project management, quality

- posted by Ironman at 8:10 AM | Permalink | Home |

We do a pretty fair share of project management here at Political Calculations, which comes part and parcel with our focus upon developing unique tools that help people answer questions of interest in their lives. We define and control the scope of our projects, create timelines, priortize tasks, allocate resources, work to meet deadlines and we do it all in reasonable amount of time and all on a shoestring budget!

So when we recently had the opportunity to hear an expert on identifying the warning signs that a project may be in trouble, we were intrigued. Jim Foreman is a Vice President of Client Solutions for project management training developer and consulting powerhouse ESI International, who has been traveling the country speaking to various quality and project management-oriented groups on the topic of "Troubled Projects - Identifying Early Warning Signs and Providing Project First Aid."

Here are the key warning signs Jim Foreman identifies as being clear indications that a project is in trouble:

1. Personnel turnover.
2. Sponsorship turnover.
3. Funding uncertainty.

The list is unsurprising in that the balance of these three factors pretty much defines every business or project in existence. You have the people who work on projects (personnel), the people who lead or organize them (sponsors), and the people who fund them ("bankers").

What each of these warning signs indicate is that trouble has already developed that is affecting whether or not the key people involved want to continue pursuing it. For example, when personnel opt to leave a project for other assignments or opportunities, they're really indicating by voting with their feet that they have greater confidence that their contributions go to better effect elsewhere.

Likewise, if you have turnover in the projects sponsors or leaders, that indicates that the people in these positions have made a determination that other efforts are more worthy their time. This is particularly true if turnover in leadership is frequent.

What ultimately kills a project however is when its "bankers" substantially increase the contigencies upon which continued funding is provided beyond what was originally defined at the beginning of the project. More than anything else, this creates uncertainty in the future of the project, which in turn affects the decisions of both personnel and project managers. Left unchecked, this creates a "death spiral" for the project.

More information: The Long Island chapter of the Project Management Institute has incorporated portions of Jim Foreman's lecture in their January 2007 minutes.

Labels: project management

- posted by Ironman at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Home |