Transforming Project Failure:
Strategies for Rescue and Recovery
Download Our Comprehensive Trio of Free Resources to Begin Your Project Recovery
This page will provide a series of downloadable project recovery resources used by our professionals here at Valstroom. Starting with the project recovery checklist, independent health assessment sheet, and finishing with the solution order matrix. Each resource will walk you through the process of creating a versatile project rescue and recovery strategy. Download all three resources to build a comprehensive, practical solution strategy for your derailing project.
Project Recovery Checklist
Health Assessment Sheet
Solution Order Matrix
Download Our Free Project Recovery Checklist, Independent Health Assesment Sheet, and Solution Order Matrix
What Do I Do Once I Realize My Project Is Sinking?
Here’s the short answer…
First of all, don’t panic or take rash action. Slow your burn rate down and commission an independent project health assessment. Take the time to quantify the contributing factors and root cause of the project failure. Re-orient the team to the true goal and re-focus them on the immediate objectives to get there.
But we can’t just leave it at that. The project rescue and recovery process is extremely difficult to sufficiently condense into one paragraph, so let’s get deeper into the process. You can start with our free project recovery checklist to know where to start and what the road ahead looks like.
Step 1: Remain Calm And Collected
The last thing you should do in this situation is panic. Project managers often fall into the trap of acting on knee-jerk reactions, but acting without proper consideration of all the factors can make the situation worse. It’s also easy in this early phase of rescue and recovery to heavily weigh outside opinions. Listen to as many opinions as you want, but ensure that what you do next is weighed most by fact.
If you can, slow things down so you can buy time to assess project damage and causes for the failure. Avoid throwing additional resources at the problem until you’ve fully analyzed the project’s health and considered how to proceed.
Step 2: Commission a Quick Independent Project Health Assessment
A project health assessment can be utilized at any point in the project lifecycle to maintain project health and spot potential issues early on.
This will give you the chance to gain an initial understanding and quantification of the factors contributing to project disaster. Doing it independently ensures you’ll make judgments without outside influence. Collaboration is still an important part of the rescue and recovery process, but it will come into play once you’ve gotten an individual perspective on the problem. Our Independent Project Health Assessment sheet will give you an idea of the assessment process.
Step 3: Determine The Root Cause and Solution
Use the project health assessment to help determine the root cause and find the most realistic and practical solution. You’ll use the findings from the process to create your solution order matrix. There most likely won’t be only one root cause, but rather multiple issues or factors that play into the project’s derailment. To ensure thoroughness, this is where you begin to solicit honest team and stakeholder feedback from all levels.
Step 4: Get Your Team Back On Track
After commencing implementation of the solutions, you can return to your team and get the project back on track. With the main issue and blocker being worked on, it’s up to you to reignite the project and re-engage the team. The team at this point may be demotivated due to acknowledgement of failure. Take this opportunity to re-establish trust and bring focus back to the new true goal and the objectives to get there. It may also be useful at this point to re-align the team to a more suitable delivery and governance model.
Step 5: Don’t Look Back
Once the project is on a clear trajectory towards recovery, don’t look back. It’s important to not dwell on what happened or apportion blame. Instead, focus on striding forward toward the new goal. A lack of focus may lead to confusion amongst your team and will inevitably send your project back into a state of project disaster. Go about business with renewed energy and continue to execute your work based on a clearly visible, prioritized backlog. Demonstrate your work and progress to key stakeholders frequently to receive fast feedback and regain trust and confidence. Consistently nudge the team towards a goal that will be relevant and competitive.
What’s also pivotal is to ensure delays have been accounted for. Push back the deadline if it’s necessary, try your best to stay on budget in the process. If that’s not possible, either try to convince key stakeholders to expand the current resources, or instead, consider reducing scope if you’re certain that the current deadline is unachievable.