Your Project Recovery Blueprint

This week’s newsletter is brought to you by: me.

But seriously, this newsletter is a labor of love. It’s an excuse for me to go down project management rabbit holes, and it connects me with interesting readers like you.

That said, I’m not running a charity. That’s why I’m opening up for one relevant sponsor slot per newsletter. The fact that you’re reading this proves that they work 😉

Keen to get your business in front of 11,000 PMs and rainmakers? Hit reply to start the conversation!

On to today’s topic…

Surprise: I have an alter ego.

Outside of running my consulting business, I love to spend my time in the mountains. Climbing, kayaking, skiing - the “sketchy stuff” as my mom calls it.

I’ve been on expeditions all over the world, and do some guiding and teaching too.

I hear you thinking…

“Good for you. Why should I care?”

Here’s why: these sports all have something in common.

My mom’s right. They’re sketchy.

That means it’s a matter of time until something goes terribly wrong.

And especially when you’re leading a group, that means you sometimes have a crisis to deal with.

The frameworks for how to deal with these, through countless courses and real-world scenarios, have shaped how I deal with crisis in business too.

So today, we’re swapping a suit & tie for Gore-Tex, and we’re headed on a rescue mission.

A project rescue mission, that is.

Ready?

First things first: what’s going on here?

The first thing you want to do is get a proper overview of the situation, without getting sucked into it.

What’s going on here?

This means that you’ll need to have a bunch of conversations, where you just ask open questions and listen.

Take some notes, but don’t jump to conclusions - that comes later.

Talk to the team, some key stakeholders, the steering committee - anyone who can help you understand what’s going on.

Where are we versus plan? What’s done, and what is left?

The tone of these conversations is crucial. They’re a safe space. You need to know ALL the dirt. Try to keep people out of finger-pointing, and encourage them to share facts and observations.

The goal is to get a feel for the situation and the dynamics of a team.

Making people feel heard is a great way to build trust early on, too. This will come in handy when it’s time to fix the situation later!

With this done, have a good look at any plans, documentation, tools, or systems that are being used. With the conversations in the back of your mind, you’ll probably see a few patterns emerge.

Combine all your input and start to paint a mental map of what’s going on.

Don’t make any more casualties

Once you have an idea of what’s going on, you have to stop the bleeding. But not just of the project itself - also of any collateral damage within the company or suppliers & customers.

This usually means a tough conversation with the team and steering committee. But it can also mean negotiating with suppliers or a client.

With an understanding of the situation and its magnitude, give them an open and honest assessment.

Don’t sugarcoat it. Be real.

The first step to solving the issue is getting everyone on the same page.

The second step is stabilizing the situation.

Time for the third step…

Next up: making a rescue plan

You have a good understanding of the situation, and you’ve hit pause to stop further damage.

The steering committee and company leadership understand the severity of the situation, and you’ve been asked to come up with a plan…

You can do this in many ways. The right way depends on the context of the project, but I’ll share the two most common ones.

Fixed deadline

In the first scenario, you have a hard (external) deadline. Going back to the newsletter from a few weeks ago about the iron triangle, this means that you have three remaining variables to play with:

• Scope

• Money

• Quality

In reality, lower quality is rarely the way out. And throwing more money at a problem usually means adding people, which increases complexity. Instead of speeding things up, this often slows things down.

More on this in an old yet brilliant classic book called “The Mythical man-month” - I highly recommend it!

So what does that leave you with? Negotiating down the scope to make the deadline.

This basically puts you back in the planning phase of the project. You have a deadline, a team, and a good understanding of what’s left to do.

List the remaining work (or, god forbid, make a Gantt chart) and add it up - it’s often that simple.

71 days of work left, but a deadline in 50? That means you, the PM, and the steerco have to decide which activities to drop to get to 40 days of work remaining.

Yes, 40. Not 50. Nothing wrong with my math. But in a situation like this, you’re guaranteed to find more issues you don’t know about yet.

Have a 20% buffer. Thank me later.

No hard deadline

The second scenario is without a fixed deadline, but a leadership team that’s pushing hard. They want it all, and yesterday.

It’s ok. It’s their job.

This means that all 4 options of the updated iron triangle are up for debate, and you have to redefine what project success looks like.

When looking at the scope, don’t forget to include the change orders that came along the way. You’re rarely dealing with the scope as defined at the start of the project.

By breaking open what (measurable) success looks like, you set a new goal. The difference with the starting situation?

You have more realistic information about how complex the project is.

I urge you to start from a blank slate and be realistic. Don’t try to adjust the existing plan piece by piece, because you’ll lose the overview.

A fresh and realistic plan

Whatever the exact scenario is, at some point you’ll end up with a new plan.

It’s your job now to get all stakeholders, team members, and the steerco on board. Easier said than done, but necessary.

Everyone has to accept the new reality and let go of the past.

And then it becomes time to address the elephant in the room: how did we get here?

That means the second part of the recovery job starts now: making sure that this doesn’t happen again.

The most common root causes I’ve seen? Underestimated or missed risks, failed stakeholder management, communication issues, scope creep, or an unrealistic plan from the get-go.

And that’s just the “highlight reel”. Often it’s a combination of those, with a nasty side-serving of people issues. This often means that a big part of the recovery job is mediating and helping a wounded team back on it’s feet.

That’s a whole different issue, and one we might dive into in the future.

Time to execute (again)

What happens next is up to the context of the project and your role within it. In my case, I usually give control back to the PM and stay with them as an advisor or join the steering committee.

Not both, that’s a conflict of interest.

What we’ve just discussed is obviously just the start of it. But I can’t sit here and write a 6,000-word newsletter…

For now, here’s what you should remember if you ever end up in a project in crisis:

1. Assess the situation

2. Avoid further escalation

3. Everyone on the same page

4. A clear and realistic plan forward

5. Control execution for repeat issues

And whatever you do, don’t get caught up working IN the project.

You’re here to work ON the project.

Fire chiefs don’t climb ladders. They decide where the ladder goes.

That’ll do for this week. This is a topic I can talk about for days, and maybe I’ll do a proper masterclass on it one day.

Meanwhile, if you have a project that’s on fire and you’re looking for an external set of eyes, I have some capacity for advisory work. Hit reply to get the conversation going, and we’ll see if I can help you out!

Cheers,
Jasper