Recovering failing projects

Abstract : most of projects are not successful, even some lead to serious damages in organizations. How to recover from such situations, when it is emotionally difficult? This article provides some insights on how to tackle this, preferably before it is too late in order to recover prior your project is failing. This article is based on author's own experience.

The context

By being busy with Project Management for more than 20 years, even if there are new Project Management approaches or the Body of Knowledge is still improving, the successful rate of projects hasn't unfortunately evolved a lot. The root causes are mostly the same ones all years along.

See CHAOS yearly survey for more information about this. Here extract from Standish Group 2014 - for illustration purpose - of impaired projects.

Early signs stay silent but mistrust is not far

Whatever the reasons, being political, ego-related, etc, very often the first signs of the failing projects appears very often quite early but due to myopia or obstination, the project still pursue its journey on the failing road, without drastic and structural actions for recovering.

At certain point of time, after several deadlines not reached for example, the mistrust symptoms are coming up between project stakeholders and service provider. All will be solved through escalation to upper level. During this phase, there is special focus, with special reporting to line management. However, the project manager stays in the middle of the desert.

How to recover from failing projects ?

In certain situations, the project has to be pursued (e.g. contractual agreements) even it is in a very bad mood. It stays a challenging journey to recover a project nearly failing. Nothing is sure to succeed in this recovery.

As interim manager, I was already several times required to either make a project assessment on a failing project/programme either being in the driving seat for recovering it.

However, here some suggestions worth to try, based on my own experience. Like always, I am interested in capturing the reader's own experiences and feedbacks, to enrich and share it further.

Urgent insight on a holistic basis

As the project is failing, there is a sense of urgency. However, as you were not involved earlier into the project, you have to quickly get an understanding on the context of the project and its scope. The tricky thing, this has to be done simultaneously with other activities, by observing and listening.

This understanding has to be performed on different layers :

The context

Before programme management was clearly established as practice, John Thorp in his book "The Information Paradox" used the BOPPT model.

Since then, I have used this model to get a quick insight on a holistic way on what is going on in an organization I step in. I like it easiness and flexibility (it enters in the Magic number 7 from Miller) but also it shows the interactions between elements (system thinking).

The way of working (deep dive in Process bubble)

As I have used CMMI model for more than 15 years, I still find the different specific practices (SP) for the process areas of level 2 very useful. It is certainly not the purpose to perform a narrow assessment but here a way to quickly identify where are the weaknesses on the project practices. Other tools as OPM3 or Prince2 Healthcheck or PM2 QA checklist are probably very useful.

The project itself

Any element as programme/project plan, contractual agreements, workplans, management plans, etc have to be assessed also. Be cautious, they are probably not updated: as such, some information may be outdated.

Focus on the next milestone to reach achievable commitments

The purpose is also to get back trust, day after day.

This requires a strong focus by whole team to be able to deliver in a short period what is committed on. In the context of a COTS implementation solution, this means that each sub teams is aligned and assesses what is required to deliver the expected feature. This has to be narrowly monitored. Also in case of technical issue, effort has to considered on short notice to sort out as quickly as possible to avoid the loose of this precious focus. Keep on board also other stakeholders (infrastructure team, suppliers,...) to ensure they understand the sense of urgency and as such they are fully committed on these short objectives.

A key component to succeed there is leadership : understanding quickly what are the remaining energy of team members, what are the level of expectations by project stakeholders, consider also the relationship between those ones and whether there are remaining conflicts still active.

Provide transparent updates

Whether the status is not good at all and emotionally heavy , it is expected you inform precisely what is the current situation to the project sponsor/steering committee (SteerCo).

Surely, this will be a difficult discussion, although the SteerCo members probably all know what is going on or at least the trends.

Work hard to get as precise insight on the situation: what is delivered, what is the quality on it, what will be required (including potential consequent budget increase) for going forwards.

Provide all your support to update the business case and in the worst case, provide advise how to release some resources to avoid burning further some cash.

But it is crucial by your attitude, franchise and expertise to instill day after day again some trust to executives.

The learning organization

Even with all of your effort and energy, it may be too late : the recovery strategy may unfortunately not help and the failure is on the agenda.

Nevertheless, based on your expertise, through the insights you have captured during the first days of your assignments and all along the observations made but also as you were not emotionally involved, perform a pre-mortem analysis on an holistic way and share it with the management of the organization.

We advise to use the BOPPT model as described here above. Focus on the governance, people interactions, be broad. Try to think on system-based (Causal Loop Diagram - CLD).

Share this report with upper management. This service you are offering should trigger the foundation for a new start and avoid the organization do the same mistakes.

The author

Laurent JANSSENS , is consultant in risk management and lecturer in this domain. Laurent is also interim manager combining programme management skills with IT, change or process management ones. In this context, he helped several organizations to recover from failing projects and is pleased to provide advice or recovery your project on this matter. Laurent provides also project coaching and mentoring.

Beside those activities, he is also busy with (IT) sustainability and promote digital/It savviness inside Boards. He is also a founding member of Be Systemic! , a think-tank promoting system thinking.