What Is Project Recovery

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Recovery is the process of dealing with challenges and issues. Those who manages projects understand that every project has its challenges and issues that must be addressed during implementation. How we deal with these often determines whether the project is successful or not, and can either strengthen or damage Company’s customer relationship.

One of the keys to project success and maintaining great customer relationships. understand that every project has its challenges and issues that must be addressed during implementation.

Steps to Project recovery

Analyzing the project situation to determine if we have a project in either a chaotic or crisis state,

Learning that we need a PM with project-recovery battle experience, and this leader may or may not be the PM in place at point of crisis determination,

Identifying and defining some characteristics and expectations of leadership, the team, and external stakeholders during a project crisis.

1. Assessment: Project recovery begins with an assessment of the situation at hand. The PM (i.e., new leader) must first conduct an assessment using interviews, project plans, status reports and other project artifacts. The purpose of the assessment is to review and document (in an objective, "State of the Project" report) the details between actual and expectations (plans) in such areas as:

a. Goals and objectives

b. Scope

c. Schedule and Milestones

d. Financials

e. Resources

f. Quality

g. Risks (including determination if any risks have been identified and if those identified have come to fruition)

2. Planning: Based on the "response" from the Assessment and the "State of the Project" report, the PM will:

Developing a new plan

Determine what source we need to recover the project

Communicate the recovery plan

As applicable, the PM should obtain senior management and customer sign-off on the Recovery Plan.

3. Execution: With Recovery Plan in place, it’s time for the PM to lead the team into action using PM best practices and the following tips and guidelines:

Co-location

Action log

Status report

Communication

Decisiveness

Flexibility

Responsibility

Good project leaders monitor tasks closely and know the early warning signs of a task that is having trouble. We value employees who are open and honest about problems and are willing to address them head on. Hiding issues and failing to disclose problems risk surprising the customer and our leadership.

Effective recovery assumes ownership of the problem, dealing with mistakes straightforwardly, and as a matter of fact.

How do we know when we have achieved Project recovery :

When the delivered project meets customer expectations we can say it is successful. Once it has been determined that project recovery has been achieved, it is recommended that the Project manager and his team monitors the project for a certain period of time to ensure the projects is under normal condition. At the end of the monitoring period the Project manager and his tem will go for Retrospective of the recovery report to identify that what went well and what didn’t go so well.

Strategies for Project recovery

The statistics regarding the troubled projects are Sobering. According to a Survey firms on average manage $200 million in projects each year; and, in the course of that year, these organizations will realize that more than a third of their projects—$74 million worth—are at risk of failing.

Research shows that when organizations take actions to recover troubled projects, they are highly successful. Almost three quarters (74%) of the troubled projects that underwent a recovery

intervention in the past three years were recovered. In addition, 18% of these projects have recovery efforts that are still ongoing the successful completion of these projects should boost the percentage of recovered projects substantially.

Firms with a standard Project management methodology for managing their projects (78% are surveyed) had fewer than half as many project failures as those that did not have.

Top causes of troubled projects

Requirements: lack of agreement, unclear, ambiguous, lack of priority, contradictory.

Resources: lack of resources, poor planning, resource conflicts.

Schedules : too tight, unrealistic, overly optimistic

Planning : missing details, based on insufficient data

Risks: unidentified or assumed, not managed.

Top 5 actions to take for project recovery

The top five actions most often taken in a project recovery intervention are:

Improving communication, stakeholder management (62%).

Redefining the project—reducing the scope, project financially (60%).

Adding and/or removing resources (58%).

Resolving problematic technical issues (49%).

Replacing the project manager or bringing in a consultant to manage recovery (36%).

Obstacles to project recovery are generally related to the original root causes of the trouble. Obstacles most often cited include:

Getting stakeholders to accept the changes needed to bring the projects back on track— whether they are changes in scope, budget, resources, etc.

Poor communication and stakeholder engagement; lack of clarity and trust.

Conflicting priorities and politics.

Finding enough qualified resources needed to complete the projects.

Lack of a process or methodology to help bring the project back on track.

PROJECT RECOVERY MANAGEMENT

Topics to cover:

Understanding the troubled projects

Root causes of failure

The definition of failure

Early warning signs of trouble

Selecting the recovery project management

Recovery life cycle phases

Understanding the troubled projects

There are some general facts about troubled projects:

Some projects are doomed to fail regardless of recovery attempts

The chances of failure on any given project may be greater than the chances of success

Failure can occur in any life cycle phase; success occurs at the end of the project.

Most companies have a poor understanding of how to manage troubled projects

Not all project managers possess the skills to manage a troubled project

Root causes of failure

Below is a generic list of common causes of failure:

End user stakeholders not involved throughout the project

Minimal or no stakeholder backing lack of ownership

Weak business case

Corporate goals not understood at the lower organizational levels

Plan asks for too much in too little time

Unclear expectations

Lack of resources

Poor overall project planning

Poor estimates

Unrealistic assumptions

Lack of control on budget

No systemization of the planning process.

These causes of project failure can be sorted into three broad categories:

Management mistakes : These are due to a failure in stakeholder management perhaps by allowing too many unnecessary scope changes, failing to provide proper governance, refusing to make

decisions in a timely manner, and ignoring the project manager’s quest for help.

Planning mistakes: These are the result of poor project management, perhaps not following the principles stated.

External influences: These are normally the failures in assessing the environmental input factors correctly.

The definition of failure:

The project manager and the stakeholders can have different definitions of project failure. The project manager’s definition might just be not meeting the triple constraints criteria. Stakeholders, on the other hand, seem more interested in business value than the triple constraints once the project actually begins.

Stakeholders’ perception of failure might be:

The project has become too costly for the expected benefits or value

The project will be completed too late

The project will not achieve its targeted benefits or value

The project no longer satisfies the stakeholders’ needs

Early warning signs of trouble:

Projects do not become distressed overnight. They normally go from "green" to "yellow" to "red", and

along the way are early warning signs that failure may be imminent or that immediate changes may be necessary.

Typical early warnings signs include

Business case deterioration

Different opinions on project’s purpose and objectives

Unhappy/disinterested stakeholders and steering committee members

Continuous criticism by stakeholders

Changes in stakeholders without any warning

Failure in progress reporting

Technical failure

The earlier the warning signs are discovered, the more opportunities exist for recovery. This is the time when a project health check should be conducted.