There was a recent Blog speaking to the processes of project recovery. The ideas were sometimes good, sometimes way to soft.
I use a book for all our recovery projects. Catastrophe Disentanglement, E. M. Bennatan, Addison Wesley. Here are the 10 steps:
- Stop - halt all project development activities and assign the team to support the disentanglement effort.
- Assign an evaluator - recruit an external professional to lead the disentanglement process.
- Evaluate project status - establish the true status of the project.
- Evaluate the team - identify team problems that may have contributed to the project's failure.
- Define minimum goals - reduce the project to the smallest size that achieves only the most essential goals.
- Determine whether minimum goals can be achieved - analyze the feasibility of the minimum goals and determine whether they can reasonably be expected to be achieved.
- Rebuild the team - based on the new project goals, rebuild a competent project team in preparation for restarting the project.
- Perform risk analysis - consider the new goals and the rebuilt team, identify risks in the project, and prepare contingency plans to deal with them.
- Revise the plan - produce a new high level project plan that includes a reasonable schedule based on professionally prepared estimates.
- Install an early warning system - put a system in place that will ensure that the project does not slip back into catastrophe mode.
