Rescue & Recovery

Rescuing a project that's failing is no easy task for a project manager, so here's some ideas to point you in the right direction.

Project Management Tips: Master the Restart

Many projects delayed by the sour economy will eventually bubble back to the surface. The landscape may have changed drastically since shelving the project, so a thorough reassessment of the projects parameters is in order.

The Project Liberation Checklist: Finishing Unfinished Projects

We all have one hiding over there in the groan zone. It's the unfinished project that lives in a strange sort of limbo. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb reminds us in The Black Swan, the longer a project goes unfinished, there is an exponential increase in the time to finish the project. Sound familiar?

Keys to Rescuing Ailing Projects

When we examine what makes projects succeed or fail, we're actually looking at a variety of vital success measures that can keep our projects healthy, or offer a powerful remedy if they start to break down. As a form of prevention, using these measures from the very beginning will make our projects considerably more successful. They'll avert many potential snags stemming from mixed communication signals, ignored problems, and unrealistic expectations that can lead to project downfall.

How to Avoid Project Failure Through Project Planning and Effective Project Recovery

There you are, project manager of a brand new project, you have done your project planning and have started implementation. Now you are thinking about what you can tell your PMI colleagues at the next chapter meeting, creating a wondrous spreadsheet to avoid project failure and revolutionise project control, and learning how to use a new whiz-bang software package you have just bought, when BAM - you are in trouble. A project wreck and you never saw it coming!

How to Get Out of Project Overwhelm

This article offers a simple, sanity-saving approach to handling projects that have not followed expectations, or have otherwise gone awry. It explains how to extricate one's team from "project overwhelm" by regrouping and swiftly charting a new course. It explores the pros and cons of attempting a last-minute, heroic manoeuvre versus proactively re-planning the tail end of the project.

Project Recovery Efforts: The Struggling Project

Project recovery is the effort and activities related to addressing troubled projects. In other words, the activities that lead you to recognise that the project is troubled, then bring you to a decision point on whether or not to save that project, then those activities you might undertake to drive that project to completion.

How to Really Fix a Failing Project

Your project is in trouble. You know it. Your team knows it. But somehow you have been able to keep it from your management. You need a quick fix. But there aren't any. What can be done to get back on track? Since yesterday's ideas didn't help, here are some suggestions that might point you in the right direction.

Why Are My Projects Struggling? Six Basics You Must Never Forget

Lately, I've noticed that my projects are getting more complicated and status review meetings are focusing mostly on issues and complaints. In fact, all projects on the dashboard are struggling, which made me ask myself, "What is going wrong in an otherwise well-oiled project management machine?"

Project Management: Lessons From The Perfect Science - Hindsight

This article captures a number of common, "We should have - " as lessons for all managers to learn before their project fails to meet expectations. Prevention is much cheaper than cure.

Rescuing Projects in Crisis - Project Turnaround Pointers

Rescuing a project is sometimes like starting a new one - you have to assess the extent of the damage, review all aspects of the project, produce a new project plan and get it approved and then bring the project to completion using tight control and monitoring techniques.

Why Software Projects Fail and How to Make Them Succeed

According to the Standish Group only about 16 percent of software projects are successful, 53 percent challenged and 31 percent cancelled. Failure has become the IT industry norm. So what can we do about it?