Are you planning out your professional development activities for the year ahead? PMI members receive discounts on:
- PMI global congresses and regional events
- SeminarsWorld® events
- eSeminarsWorldSM courses
- Publications in PMI’s Marketplace
- PMI® Publication Quizzes
- Credential fees and credential maintenance fees
Let PMI help you build your project management skill set and advance your career. Need to renew your PMI membership? Click here.
If you’re going to survive a troubled project, you’re going to have to win over stakeholders.
“Stakeholders usually have a certain image of a product and when things go wrong, they tend to quantify the errors,” Mr. Nassar says. “So the project manager needs to assure them that this is why we are here, and to bring things back in perspective and in budget as per the contract and agree on a revised hand-over date.”
Project managers should start by identifying a project’s bottlenecks and ferreting out the reasons behind the problems. This is where it can get tricky. Be prepared for a wide spectrum of responses from team members—and keep in mind that the reason for each one probably has some validity.
“[Discovering bottlenecks] helps in projecting the delays and in isolating the reasons—not necessarily recovering from delays,” Mr. Nassar says. “In doing so, the project manager in charge recognizes the critical phase at which the project side-tracked from the original contract. There isn’t a specific methodology to adopt. It’s more of an adaptive approach that is built on facts and figures.”
Once all the issues have been identified, Mr. Nassar advises you to determine a course of action. If you can address each issue and “pick them off one by one,” that usually works best, he says.
No matter the outcome, remember that setting the project back on track requires a strong, competent team.
“By managing troubled projects, I had a chance to improve my people skills,” she notes. “[These] skills are really [what] makes the difference and act like the bridge from failure to success.”
Ms. Henriques recommends following a four-step process:
- Ensure team members have the right skills for the project and the desire to transform a troubled project into a successful one.
- Manage risks proactively. Do not pretend everything is progressing smoothly if you encounter major issues.
- Focus on creating strong relationships with key stakeholders or project sponsors so they know they can depend on you.
- Plan ahead for all the resources you will need to get the project back on track—and then ask for those tools and resources.
Once you have completed these four basic steps, you can concentrate on keeping up morale and keeping the team focused.
When team members’ commitment to a troubled project wanes, project leaders should motivate them. Remind them that their expertise is valued and that the experience they gain from getting a troubled project back on track will be useful in the future.
“Managing the team to make sure they realize a troubled project is also a unique experience and opportunity is a task the project manager must be focused on—and that will ensure the team is motivated and willing to succeed on all the challenges they face in the troubled project,” Ms. Henriques says.
When confronted with a troubled project, Mr. Ivezic suggests you first figure out if you can salvage it.
If the project is beyond repair, you should not hesitate to recommend that the company cut its losses.
If it looks like it could be saved, Mr. Ivezic tries to reconfigure his original plan of attack—instead of trying to make up lost time by cutting corners. This sometimes means he starts from scratch with a new plan or scope. Most importantly, let the stakeholders know what you are doing.
Open and honest communication can help during the rescue operations.
“You can never over-communicate. Even if you do all the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) processes right and produce all the artifacts, you still can’t assume that everybody read [all your documents to get the information they need],” Mr. Ivezic says. “Always make sure that stakeholders have all the information before making any decisions and that your team members have all the information they need for their tasks.”
Recently, Mr. Lear served as project manager for the implementation of a new warehouse control system. With a fixed schedule, the warehouse went into production before the software was fully functional, which led to major problems with the system’s reliability.
To turn the project around, Mr. Lear started with basic data gathering—including information about how the system operates—“to support a root-cause analysis instead of chasing symptoms.”
He provided the sponsor with daily updates and established a 60-day plan to replace the original vendor team with local resources. Within three months, Mr. Lear managed to eliminate 95 percent of the system’s outages.
“In dealing with troubled projects, the first thing I rely upon is my experience with well-run projects,” he says. “That gives you a target to aim for—what am I seeing or missing in the troubled project that is present in a functioning project?”
Troubled projects also tend to wreak havoc on team morale. To keep everyone motivated, Mr. Lear suggests acknowledging the issues plaguing the project and discussing strategies to bring it back on track. To “build a sense of progress,” he also advises project managers to establish small goals that can be easily checked off a list.
“Ignoring issues, hoping they go away on their own, is a recipe for failure,” he explains. “Avoiding difficult decisions just leads to more painful choices later on. … Be sympathetic for sunk costs, but make decisions based on the costs and benefits of moving forward. Some troubled projects should be canceled.”
Do you have a comment about this article or would you like to offer more advice or tips for turning around troubled projects? E-mail the PMP Passport Editor. PMI would like to hear from you and may consider your response for future publications.
