RED/ RED/ RED - Programme and Project Recovery

So may be one of your programmes as part of your major piece of modernisation isn't performing? Maybe you've got one project that just keeps failing to progress and it's holding up or putting others at risk?

This programme/ project is reporting red on budget, red on timelines and red on scope. You've stopped seeing red any more and this project or programme is now a shade of unmentionable brown.

How do you fix it?

The Basics

Well let me start with why I am qualified to talk to you, dear reader, about this subject. I'm an expensive-cost-effective-resource. Why is that relevant? Clients sometimes don't want to pay for me from the very beginning, they've got internal resources that don't cost them as much and the supplier said they would handhold them through the process so the internal teams lack of experience in this area won't matter. Sure it doesn't matter that there are unique constraints such as a large part of the project being a first of type and the supplier is having to reinvent their playbook, that's okay.

Until it's not... maybe the programme has been dragging on for 18 months, missing every milestone but always with a promise that everyone is redoubling their efforts and things will improve in the next X amount of weeks. Maybe those promises are not quite materialising week after week and patience is wearing thin. That's typically when folks like me get a call... and my cost effectiveness becomes apparent. Your big-organisation-redefining-programme is at risk. This project that might only be 5 to 15% of the overall budget but a lot of your cash releasing benefits are tied to it or a key part of the shiny user orientated benefits can't be realised if you can't integrate with X, Y and/ or Z. So you get me in to resolve the challenges and get you back on track and the cost of me is nothing in comparison to the damage being done. (Editor: point out that you also do greenfield programmes, not just recovery!).

Dearest of readers, this situation I am talking about here is hypothetical. It's not untrue but it would be unprofessional of me to talk about a specific client so I am using a generic example but based upon multiple experiences sown together.

So where do I start? At the beginning of course - we need to start doing the basics well and I need to know where things have gotten to (take the boy out of the West Country...). I want to see the latest reports, analysis, budgets, plans, contracts, risks and issues, scoping documents etc. Then I'm going to challenge them, I don't care if they are out of date, I have to see what's there to figure out the key problems. I'm going to read, I'm going to talk, I'm going to go ferreting around in all the nooks and crannies until I understand not just what people think has been done and achieved but what has actually happened. 9 times out of 10, it's usually worse than what was believed or understood by the board or the execs but that's okay.

Let's start by getting some basics up and running, the RAID is out of date, get that up to date! The plan is adrift by 6 months and entered dependency hell? Okay let's create a quick plan on what we want to achieve this week and next. The budget is running out, okay figure out how to keep the lights on for the next month. Silly things like getting all the documentation filed and in one place is going to help us get things going in the right direction. Let's start getting control... Now.

Review

Okay so we've found our problems. That's a major win already but we just need to start fixing stuff NOW right? Well I admire your enthusiasm but given the Red/ Red/ Red nature of the situation, I'm sure a few different people from the Project Manager to the SRO has chucked in multiple strategies and different thoughts on how to just get things sorted. This has probably resulted in much shouting, a lot of confusion, a fair amount of conflict and things still being Red/ Red/ Red.

I'm not saying do nothing, focus on the basics and doing them well until we can sort out a new plan and something achievable. We have found the problems and now we need to unpick each one quickly but effectively.

I will use some examples of the type of actions that I might take...

Red Budget

So the the programmes budget/ forecast was out of date, okay let's get that up to date for a start. It's missing some key line items, let's get those added in. Nothing complex there. Let's take a look at what has been spent and allocated so far on the work that has been completed and let's do some what I call project-management-maths to project forwards average costs for each deliverable. Oh hell that's a big number and worse than everyone was thinking! This is how to get really unpopular, really quickly! Still that gives us something to work on! Let's get a review on ALL the relevant contracts and by review... I mean me, myself and I are going to sit down and read the contracts, your contracts team are great but I just need to know first hand and I need to know quickly.

So I allocate a 2 hours to reviewing 400 page contract with the new system supplier and find some interesting choices in there (I'm looking for the juicy bits, honestly I'm not overly interested in what happens if we get hit by a snow storm on the 3rd Tuesday of the month). I go through the 3rd party services contract... hang on! We've paid twice, we've paid the system supplier and our partners money to get the same work done. Well now it's time to get folks around a table and get some pennies back in the kitty! You'd be surprised at how often this happens, Procurement buy something from Sales but the collective project team don't have it in their purview. This is just one example but buy me a drink sometime and I may share some of the madness I've seen over the years.

Red Scope

I could talk about either of the two most common things I see and at great length but I'm just going to pick one. For those following along at home, the two most common examples are scope not fully defined and too much scoped in each delivery phase.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe... I think I will go with ill-defined scope - may be project has to migrate a lot of legacy data from a lot of smaller legacy systems. So we have a list of legacy systems but not what is in them, what we want to move (and leave) and how we are going to extract it. So yes we have a scope but really we don't know if we are dealing with 1 tonne or 10 tonne of...

Well this hypothetical programme has been running for 18 months so why don't we know? That's a rather bloody good question. We can't really plan anything until we know but why don't we know. Let's go and sit with the analysts who have been attempting to gather this information and respectfully find out why. Let's also gate crash some of their sessions with the stakeholders.

So we find out our expensive analysts are not performing and they are burning budget like its going out of fashion. Time to make a new plan and go talk to staffing and procurement. We could get a team in mostly of more junior resources (and more of them) with some strong leads and get to it! This should help not only our scope problem but also the budget issue.

Red Timeline

Okay so we've been running on a plan-to-get-a-plan but the board are getting impatient and want to see a new timeline. How do you get that? Guess? Make promises and figure out how to deliver them later? Perform a sacred dance to the gods of PRINCE2? Mmm no but maybe that last one a bit ??.

So you know the pain points and you've started fixing them so work out a realistic timeline without those issues. Define when you will know what MVP and completion looks like. Don't guess, be honest. Yes you will be challenged but if you talk to the key stakeholders before the big forums and explain your approach, the progress you've made to date then you will buy yourself some goodwill.

It sucks but while you're sorting out your scope you have to provide realistic information and projections. Maybe focus your reporting on your remediation progress and when that will be completed and when you will be able to provide the longer term plan. If you've recovered ￡,￡￡￡,￡￡￡ from the budget, that will usually help your cause.

Action and Conclusion

I've already hinted at some of the actions I might take so I'm not going to rehash that too much here. You've done the work, you have gotten the basics down - you've found the issues with budget and may be put out the begging bowl. You're onboarding new resources and you have your remediation plans. Well done, you have started recovering the project or programme. Is there more to it, of course but it's not some mystical art. It's just hard graft and to be honest, quite often a lot of fun too.

Any tips that anyone wants to share? I could have added so much more but I didn't want to make this too big!