Rescuing and Revitalizing the Problem Project

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Abstract
Have you ever wished you could just start over? Sometimes that's exactly what a troubled project calls for. This paper outlines how to get a panicked project team to stop, take a deep breath, analyze what has gone wrong and how to get it right again, and re-launch your disaster project with new, actually attainable goals.

What this is

This paper, originally presented at the ProjectWorld conference, describes how to use the guidelines and techniques of Quality Rapid Product Development (QRPD®) to pinpoint and fully understand the project's past problems, revitalize your plan and your team, and get that product out the door. Typical scenarios from actual projects are used to illustrate how these approaches come into play in the real world. It also discusses how the same guidelines and techniques could have been used to avoid the problems in the first place.

Why it's useful

Once the project's predicament is obvious, all too often the energy that's needed for finding a solution goes instead to recriminations, "spin control", and attempts to place blame elsewhere. The fact is that time-to-market still matters, so the company and the project team must go beyond those natural reactions to constructive action: a real plan for getting the product out the door. This paper provides detailed steps for re-launching a troubled project by getting the team recommitted to a realistic plan.

How to use it

• Read the paper for detailed guidelines on how to accomplish your project re-launch.
• Assess your project, accurately and honestly, following the guidelines provided in the paper. The questions provided will help you figure out the real causes of most of the problems, as well as the recommended actions for correcting them.
• Analyze your alternatives. Should you revisit the project vision, or the schedule? Will adding resources help? Is it time for a change of management? This is where an accurate assessment is critical -- if you haven't identified the right problems, you can't find the right solutions.
• Decide on a new course with your team, management, and stakeholders.
• Re-launch your project based on the decisions made above -- no waffling or second-guessing allowed. If your project is already in trouble, agonizing over decisions is only going to make things worse.
• Record your observations, re-launch strategies, and results as lessons learned to help keep the next project on track. Our most valuable learning comes from mistakes and missteps. Don't throw away all that hard-won knowledge by pretending the problem never happened!

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