Project Recovery Case Study

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a. Indicators of a troubled project
• No one has a firm idea of when the project will finish and most people have given up trying to guess.
• The product of the project is full of defects.
• Team members are working excessive hours – 60 hours per week or more of involuntary overtime.
Management has lost its ability to control progress or even to ascertain the project’s status with any accuracy.
• The customer has lost confidence that the team will ever deliver the promised goods.
• The team is defensive about its progress.
• Relations between project team members are strained.
• The project is on the verge of cancellation.
• The morale of the project team has hit rock bottom.
• The customer is threatening legal action against the delivery …show more content…

Conducting the Recovery

The objective of this phase is to execute recovery plan in order to return project in line with the business benefits expectations. During execution, the estimating methods and their accuracy are continuously validated, accurate forecast of project completion is made. Threats, problems and opportunities are continuously monitored. The output of this phase is a recovered project with baselined project plan for project completion.

While there are many factors that enter into the success of project recovery efforts, the research shows that the project manager is one of the most important factors. A qualified project recovery manager, rather than the senior management needs to own the recovery and need to determine what actually went wrong. Project recovery managers experienced in turnarounds and with excellent leadership abilities, strong knowledge of organization business, management processes and good project management skills are …show more content…

In the beginning, as leader-member relations are getting developed the task oriented approach is likely to deliver better results. Leader-member relations will be of great importance during this phase. Tasks should be structured at this stage as a fresh realistic recovery plan has been agreed. Tasks need to be prioritized to address the needs of key stakeholders. Project recovery managers ensure a smooth transition over to the project manager and the team while restructuring the project team. It is important that a proper due diligence is carried out before restructuring the team. The recovery manager needs to be proactively aggressive.

The experience of recovery manager is important. The problems impacting may not be evident and the manager may need to probe and also see the impact of actions taken. Recovery is kind of one time chance, a second recovery is never an option. Poor decisions will hurt so the options need to be contextualized. Opportunities missed will be difficult to get back. Delegation and trust is important, micro management is difficult and can be

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