WIT Systems Corporation

PMI MN Chapter Breakfast Meeting 06/10/2008

©2007-2008 WIT Systems Corporation Cedar Rapids, IA 52410-0692 [email protected]

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"Failed Project Recovery: Cold Restart: From the Emergency Room into the Recovery Room" – PMI Minnesota Chapter Breakfast Meeting 06/10/2008©2007 WIT Systems Corporation, Cedar Rapids, IA 52410-0692 - [email protected]

WIT Systems Corporation

Project Health Series

Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartFrom the Emergency Room into the Recovery Room

Presented by Doug Williams, PMP

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartSession Overview

� Intended Audience � Primary to executives, executive sponsors, project sponsors,

project managers, and resource managers

� Secondary to other project participants or project observers interested in the topic area

� Our Primary Objective� To understand a set of project inventory, assessment, analysis,

and realignment steps needed for a “cold restart” style failed project recovery



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartOur Session’s Topic Flow

� Project Failure Analysis – Points to Ponder

� Project Failure Analysis – Topic Foundations

� Project Health Analysis – Exploratory Review

� Failed Project Recovery: Cold Restart – Perform Surgery

� Failed Project Recovery: Cold Restart – The Recovery Room

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartPoints to Ponder – Standish Group

Source: Chaos Chronicles, The Standish Group International, Inc

Extreme CHAOS - An IT Project Resolutions History

31%40%

28% 23%15% 18% 19%

53% 33%46%

49%51%

53% 46%

16%27% 26% 28%

34% 29% 35%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

1994 1996 1998 2000 2003 2004 2006

Year

Failed Challenged Success



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartPoints to Ponder – Leading Failure Indicators

� The plan is just not correct!

� Unresolved issues overcome the project work

� No plan - Let’s just get something going! - is project tone

� Project management becomes the project focus for a non-project management project

� A majority of key project team members quit

� “It is what it is” statement is made by decision makers

� Project manager change occurs

� Project sponsor change occurs

� Organizational business purpose changes

� Funding source is reduced, lost, or not acquired

� Team skills simply do not meet the work needs

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartPoints to Ponder – Project Failure Perspectives

� What is a project failure at its best?

� 30% of desired results are not being delivered

� 30% over approved and allocated budget condition exists

� 30% beyond the time allocated condition exists

� Some essential project failure reminders

� Projects do not fail, people do

� Project failures contain a sizable quantity of problematic project planning and project execution behaviors

� When ignorance and arrogance lead, projects will fail again



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartTopic Foundations – The Project Data Cores

� Understand a project by working its primary project management category based data cores

� Consider the need to overlap scope, time, and cost data usage

� Consider the relationship of resources to scope, time and cost data elements

� Understand the influences from project events like tasks, risks, issues, changes and decisions

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartTopic Foundations – Project Complexity Explained

� Understand that any perceived quick or simple fix to a project increases the project’s general work complexity

� Study how the objects at right relate to each other and how adding another box (D), a simple fix, adds complexity to the relationships with other boxes

A

C

B

D

A → B

C → AB → A D → A

A → C

C → B

B → C

D → B

A → D C → DB → D

D → C



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartTopic Foundations – Complexity and Workloads

� Understand how project processes and their complexities relate to the level of effort needed to perform the project activities and tasks

� Not recognizing a project’s capacity ceiling (red-zone) often leads to the project being overcome by an increasing burden of work, here represented by the work curve

Processes (1 – n)

Figure 2

Work Capacity Ceiling

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartTopic Foundations – Project Behaviors To Notice

� Look for and recognize common project behaviors to be encountered during any project recovery effort

Procrastination Indifference

Neglect Avoidance

Denial Rationalization

Blame Undermining

One-upmanship Bullying

Harassment Sabotage

Verbal abuse Physical abuse



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartTopic Foundations – Align the Approach to Recovery

� The PMBOK®knowledge areas help us create a project health analysis order and work domains

� The project manager is better prepared to audit the project methodically and with the intention of creating order from disorder

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – Create Recovery Project Plan

� Understand that the project recovery is a project by itself and should not be considered part of the failed project

� Retain a project recovery specialist and team!

� Develop a project recovery plan to work from temporarily

� Establish one “sponsor level” spokesman for the re-plan

� Establish an event log to account for recovery items like actions, issues, risks, decisions, and corrective actions

� Establish an inventory tracking log to account for all the project artifacts encountered, what they represent, who are their owners/authors, and when they were last updated

� Establish a communication plan specific to the project recovery effort and progress reporting requirements



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – The Starting Baseline Audit

� Acquire and analyze the failed project’s initial definition

� Who were the primary decision makers?

� What were the initial project objectives?

� What were the project success criteria?

� What was declared explicitly in scope? Explicitly out of scope?

� What were the published deadlines?

� How much funding was estimated? How was it allocated?

� Were work related skill needs balanced with skills offered?

� What were project standards, methods, definitions and tools?

� Where were initial project artifacts (documents, etc.) found?

� Store this analysis result for future baseline review reference

� This analysis is marked The Starting Baseline

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – The Current Baseline Audit

� Acquire and analyze the failed project’s current definition

� Who are the primary decision makers?

� What are the initial project objectives?

� What are the project success criteria?

� What was declared explicitly in scope? Explicitly out of scope?

� What are the currently published deadlines?

� How much funding has been used? What is still needed?

� Are work related skill needs balanced with skills offered?

� What are project standards, methods, definitions and tools?

� Where are project artifacts (documents, approvals, etc.)?

� Store this analysis result for future baseline review reference

� This analysis is marked The Current Baseline



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – The Baselines Gap Analysis

� Compare and contrast the starting and current baselines using an analysis structured to the standard work domains

� Communication management

� Scope management

� Time management

� Cost management

� Human resource management

� Quality management

� Procurement management

� Project integration management

� Risk management

� Based on the analysis, describe (in the event log) actions, issues, risks, decisions, and corrective actions to be pursued for the project recovery corrective action plan line items

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – The Failure Influencers

� Use the questions below to analyze and describe tendencies encountered in the starting and current baselines� What is executive support, involvement and experience?

� Is scope being minimized/trivialized from initial definition?

� Do reliable estimates exist and map to the project work?

� What is end-user/end-beneficiaries involvement?

� Does the project have clear business objectives?

� Do firm basic requirements with acceptance criteria exist?

� Does the project manager’s experience match the project?

� Do standard infrastructures support the project workflows?

� Are formal process/practice methodologies being followed?

� Use these descriptions help explain why the project is off

� Update the event log appropriate to this analysis



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – The Organizational Culture

� Use the questions below to analyze and describe the project’s related organizational culture or behaviors

� How does the team match the project’s capability needs?

� How does the team work with (or against) each other?

� Does the team have the workload capacity for the project work

� What are the communication protocols, habits, and rumors?

� How are reporting structures understood?

� How are tasks assigned and tracked?

� How do reward and reprimand systems work for the project?

� What is the management teams’ capacity for bad news

� Use these descriptions help explain why the project is off

� Update the event log appropriate to this analysis

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – The Health Summary

� Study the analysis and event log entries for corrective action plan clues – must do, should do, and should defer

� Assemble a formal project health summary for the following� Strengths to leverage

� Weaknesses to improve

� Obstacles to eliminate - top ten issues

� Tendencies towards failure - top ten risks

� Compose a high-level corrective actions list – A Kill Sheet

� Compose a high-level recovered project plan – New Plan

� List any event log items needing immediate executive or sponsor level follow up prior to project recovery surgery start



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartExploratory Review – The Health Summary

� Preview the health summary with the sponsor level spokesman

� Present the results (likely amended from the sponsor level spokesman) to project stakeholders

� Ask for significant management involvement

� Obtain explicit management authority to support project recovery specific surgery effort and make cultural changes needed after the project’s recovery restart events occur

� Ensure the failed project’s current efforts are stopped

� Ensure that the failed project is quarantined from others

� Ensure any pending executive or sponsor level actionable items are completed

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartPerform Surgery – The Data Cores

� Establish a centralized project data cores assembly

� Scope details (features, requirements, etc.)

� Schedule details (durations and deadlines)

� Costing details (budgeting, costs, opportunity costs, etc.)

� Resources (physical and human descriptions and usage)

� Risks (log details and other tracking attributes)

� Issues (log details and other tracking attributes)

� Changes (log details and other tracking attributes)

� Tasks (log details and other tracking attributes)

� Decisions (log details and other tracking attributes)

� Build project management processes that allow the project data to only be manipulated and reported from the cores



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartPerform Surgery – The Project Playbook

� Establish a project specific operations playbook to cover standards, guidelines, definitions and tools across the standard work domains

� Communication management

� Scope management

� Time management

� Cost management

� Human and physical resource management

� Quality management

� Procurement management

� Project integration management

� Risk management

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartPerform Surgery – The Recovery Baseline

� Educate the project team using the Project Playbook

� Establish a new project plan – be ready to toss the old plan

� Remember that a plan is more than a Gantt chart

� The plan should be supported by the project team members

� Perform a plan walkthrough – front to back approach

� Provokes getting “something started” thought patterms

� Reveals earliest completion windows between groups

� Perform a plan walkthrough – back to front approach

� Provokes getting “something finished” thought patterns

� Reveals completeness errors based on “what do I need?”

� Perform any “old” plan to “new” plan transition analysis and mapping for scope, schedule, cost, and resources

� Mark this point as The Recovery Baseline



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartPerform Surgery – The Transition

� Assign a new project manager to work the new project plan

� Establish a centralized project communications practice using the cores as the only data source

� Establish a decision making body to govern the project

� Set a new plan effective start date – new plan baseline start

� Create presentation materials for a restart specific all team meeting and playbook confirmation review

� Restart project controls monitoring processes and tools

� Restart cleaned event management practices and tools

� Hold a project restart all team meeting –mandatory

� Confirm project restarted condition with first status report

� Rely on the data cores and playbook for future status reports

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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartIn The Recovery Room

� Retain the project recovery specialist for post project recovery monitoring, consultation, and any corrective actions needed during the first 2-5 weeks of new plan work

� Monitor the project to see if old project behaviors reemerge or persist, if recovery actions are rejected, or if failure symptoms show again

� Preserve the three baselines made during the process for any historical needs and lessons learned reflection

� Perform any project recovery clean up actions

� Disengage the project recovery specialist



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Failed Project Recovery: Cold RestartClosing – Relevant Sayings To Remember

� “Fail to plan, plan to fail!”

� Test the plan front to back and then back to front

� Project success after a project failure takes a lot of work

� Every choice you make alters the project path towards success or failure; choose wisely and deliberately

� “Extreme focus delivers ”

Documents

WIT Systems Corporation