Emergency Landing! Dealing with failing projects

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Emergency Landing!Dealing with failing projects

• Mike AllenProject DirectorStrategic Asset
  Management Information System (SAMIS)

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Overview

• The Basics
• Defining Recognising Failure
• Coming up with a remedy
• Making the Emergency Landing
• Summary

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What is crucial for project success?

• Foundations (some) of success
• Committed sponsor with power
• Effective governance
• Clear and agreed scope in writing!
• Clear roles and responsibilities and the right
  people
• Firm funding arrangements
• Formal project management
• Communication
• Clearly identified stakeholders
• Time to plan and review if you fail to plan,
  plan to fail

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Time, Quality and people

• Recognise that all things are finite, especially
  projects
• There is a tight link between time, budget and
  quality. If you want more from one expect less
  from the others.
• People deliver projects and NOTHING makes up for
  having the wrong people.

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The unholy/holy Trinity

• Risks
• Issues
• Changes

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Definition of Failure

• What traditionally defines failure?
• Over time
• Over budget
• Not meeting expectations Quality
• What else?
• You fail if everyone says youve failed
• You did what you were asked but so what?
• What is delivered no longer has a positive
  benefit profile
• You deliver something that works but in the eyes
  of the key stakeholders does not

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Are we in trouble?

• Some classic signs for the
• Sponsor
• Project Manager
• Stakeholders
• The emperor isnt wearing any clothes

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Working with traditional failure

• The budget
• The timeframe
• The quality
• Usually the worse thing you can do is feed the
  symptoms
• Giving more dollars ? to the over budget project
• More time ? to the overdue project
• Reduce expectations ? from a poor quality
  project
• Being over time, budget and lacking quality is
  usually a symptom not the cause find the causes!

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Working with subjective failure

• The Golden Rule
• The Ivory Tower Syndrome
• The end justifies the means
• The Field of Dreams strategy
• The unintended embarrassment
• The martyr syndrome
• The paint a target on my chest syndrome (a
  martyr syndrome variant)

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Emergency Landing or Disaster?

• Know where you are is this project flying or
  not?
• Know where you need to go and why its always
  better to land on a runway
• No matter how big you think the problem its
  usually its bigger!
• You need friends in the control tower
• You need to be the calm one if you are the pilot!

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Going Forward

• Always remember the most important 3 letter word
  WHY?
• One option ALWAYS has to be to kill the project
  and salvage what you can.
• Project Archaeology dig until there is only dirt

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Which one is you ?
All of them !
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Using Contingency

• Be realistic. If the contingency was that good
  youd have done it in the first place!
• There will be pain
• There will be consequences
• This needs management
• What if it fails?
• Contingency strategies dont always work, try to
  have 2 and learn how to pray!
• Sometimes it is better to ride out the storm

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Keeping the faith

• Communication will buy you time and help
  gain/regain support start straight away and keep
  going!
• Be honest, but dont be naïve work out who you
  can trust
• Seek frank advice from stakeholders
• Recognise the key influencers and work with them
• There is ALWAYS time for 2 things in a project
• Planning
• Communication

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10 Steps to recover your project

1. Find the sponsor and confirm their buy in.
2. Talk to the stakeholders and get them actively
   involved
3. Start communicating be honest but not naïve.
4. Project Management get some!
5. Rescope for success

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10 Steps to recover your project

• Re estimate
• Restart
• Short term milestones
• Regular reporting
• Celebrate Im serious!

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Finally

• Fixing projects is many times more difficult than
  running them
• and many times more rewarding!
• Good Luck!
• and fasten your seatbelts for landing!

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Thank You!
www.samis.sa.gov.au For a copy of this
presentation under Resources and then Project
Documentation