1. Project Failures and Turning Around Troubled Projects
Zubin Irani, PMP, CSM
CEO & Co-Founder
Twitter: @iranizubin
cPrime, Inc.
4100 E. Third Ave, Suite 205
Foster City, CA 94404

2. About cPrime
cPrime provides Agile and Project Management staffing, consulting, and training services. A focus on Project Management provides industry leading personnel and comprehensive courses in Project and Program Management through cPrime Training Center.

3. Why are we here? Challenged late (100% median)
over budget (50% median)
lacking functionality
low quality
Data from 50,000 projects
Copyright © 2009 by The Standish Group International, Inc.

4. Success = Satisfied Customers, Users and IT
Success is not “planned scope, on time, on budget”
We may think this way
Customers don’t (even if they say they do…)
Success is “customer satisfaction with responsiveness and the right functionality”
Customers want features that will help them increase revenues or meet their management objectives
Customers want to be included in the project
They want predictable and consistent results
Success is “the team is proud of what they’ve implemented”
People talk about that project team for years to come
Management truly celebrates successes with the team
Value is added to the organization
People feel that everyone worked equally hard to make the project a success 4

5. Failure = Everyone Unhappy
Project Team is burned out and miserable
Business Customers feel like they paid too much for something they don’t want
IT Management got their butts chewed out
CIO got his butt chewed out by his boss
Business Exec got chewed out because they missed their numbers
Some people get fired or functionally demoted!
Vendors get sued and/or don’t get paid
The effects last for a very very long time!

6. Let’s talk about past project problems
Pick two recent projects and discuss with your neighbor:
What went wrong?
When did you identify that there was a problem?
What symptoms did you see?
What does a Project in trouble look like?

7. What does “trouble” look like?
No one on the project knows when the project will finish
The project’s deliverables are loaded with errors and defects
Management is unable to forecast a project completion date or estimate to completion
Requirements keep changing
Inconsistent goals and constraints
The customer has lost confidence that the project team will ever deliver the promised deliverables
The morale of the project team is very low
The team is experiencing irresolvable conflicts
Interpersonal relations between project team members are highly strained
Management is considering the cancellation of the project
Many deliverables have been 90 percent complete for a long time

8. Example Project – CRM Implementation
New CRM implementation
10,000 users
50 call centers
Impacting Sales, Customer Service, Marketing, Finance, & IT organizations
Project is late, many bugs, burned out resources, and very political
Does this sound familiar?

9. CRM Implementation Project Example
Business environment was rapidly changing resulting in new initiatives and project requirements
Existing requirements changing due to unknown deliverables
Management surprised by new/changing tasks and by a large budget change request
Teams were seeing issues but weren’t communicating them
Have you ever been asked to Turnaround a Troubled Project?

10. Your Role as the Turn-Around Project Manager
Internal vs External Project Manager
Influence
Ability to affect change
Traits
Driven
Solution focused
Positive

11. The right turnaround Project Manager
A great Project Manager is a Leader
Controls emotions
Makes other people look good
Communicates clearly, succinctly and regularly
Builds Trust with other people
Inspires
Creative Problem-Solver
Detailed Oriented
Brings positive energy

12. Your choices Continue the project as is and accept the risks
Very expensive, poor deliverables, loss of reputation
Stop the project
Sunk costs lost, no value to the business, loss of reputation
Continue the project but make key changes to get back on track
An opportunity to deliver value
Identify the problems and take action
Only the last option to continue and make changes is viable for most any organization

13. Treat it like a new project
Plan of attack
Acknowledge that there’s a problem
Gather Project Information
Review the problems and solutions with the sponsors & stakeholders
Plan the project recovery
Execute the recovery and get the project back on track!
Treat it like a new project

14. 1. Acknowledge that there’s a problem
Meet with the project sponsors and stakeholders to discuss their perception of the project’s history and intentions:
Understand their expectations and how they define success
Limit the discussions and findings to project issues
Activities associated with recovering a project may be highly sensitive to human emotions and reactions.
There are no canned solutions for a troubled project
Be realistic with what can be done to “fix” the project
Be open-minded and ready to change
First step to re-building trust and credibility

15. CRM Implementation Project Example
Acknowledging the problems
Cost and schedule overruns triggered discussions about project health
Presented and disclosed core problems and agreed to make the necessary changes to fix it
Let them know additional funding, resources and a change in timeline is inevitable
Examples
Now, let’s go Gather Project Data…

16. 2. Gather Project Information
Gather project details to determine where the project went off track
How is “trouble” defined?
More than just scope/schedule/budget – what metrics available?
What work remains to be done? Will it provide appropriate deliverables?
Root cause of these project problems?
Stakeholder expectations
Audit documentation
Most answers and solutions already exist ---- extract the information from the team members, organize and use it to help solve the problems
How does a company or PMO define “trouble” or “failure”
Does the organization have any project metrics that can be used to discover where problems may exist?
Validate the remaining scope – what work needs to be done? Does it align with stakeholder expectations?
What caused the project to get off track?
What do the stakeholders expect from you? What is within your ability to change?
Document the assessment of the project and potential solutions

17. Review Project Metrics and Reporting
All earned value metric (Cost variance, CPI, Schedule variance, SPI, etc)
Task list and tasks completed
Initial requirements and changed logs
Resource turnover, resource changes
Overtime rate
Defect data/Error Logs
Problem data
Verify that all work reported as "done" is in fact completed.
Validate the current status of all activities.
Investigate weekly and monthly status reports, problem and issues logs, and memos.
A lot of Troubled Projects will be missing some of these items!

18. Review Project Processes and Documentation
Recurring project and management meetings? Notes from each meeting?
How does the project team track and respond problems and issues?
What reports are used? How are these reports gathered?
What processes are there? Are the processes documented? Are the processes appropriate to control the project and respond to problems?

19. Capture and summarize your audit findings
Project summary/background
Sponsors, stakeholders, and approvers
Audit team members
Initial Project Charter
Business case
Risks
Deliverable defects
Key findings/Root cause of problems
Recommendations
Immediate action plans
Impact to original project budget, schedule, and deliverables
Transparency is key to re-building Trust

20. CRM Implementation Project Example
Audit Findings
Found there were over 800 defects in Integration Testing, due to a hobbled environment and lack of unit testing by development
There wasn’t any data in the Performance Test environment, so the Performance Team was spending 3 days to seed enough data for a 2 hour performance test
Budget was 22% over forecasted labor projections
Requirements changes were changing constantly and were not being tracked or managed
Teams weren’t as far along as they had been reporting to management
Test and development teams were pointing fingers at each other
There wasn’t an integrated project plan that was being managed

21. 3. Review Problems and Solutions
Re-establish stakeholder confidence in the project
Present solutions as one of the many options to get the project back on track
Set realistic timelines and budgets
Outline factors beyond your control and provide a mitigation plan if possible
Own the new project – you have inherited the problems and successful completion will be your win
Stay confident admit the difficulty of the challenge
Discuss the impact of rebuilding the project team
ReBRAND EVERYTHING
What are some solutions you’ve used before?

22. 4. Plan the Solution Work with core team leads as needed Work more
Get more productivity out of your team with over time
Focus resources on critical tasks
Change up the team
Add more efficient or knowledgeable resources
Crash the schedule
Lock down scope
Increase the budget
Change or create project processes
+ dozens more

23. CRM Implementation Project Example
Project Solutions
Bring in outside Subject Matter Experts and technical resources
Lock down all scope changes
Set up steering committee to review issues and technical solutions
Break deliverables into phases to delivery project value sooner
Swap out Team Leads that were under performing and weren’t willing to collaborate with counter-parts
Designate a Project Coordinator to manage labor hours and expenses

24. 5. Execute Your Recovery
Closely monitor recovery activities and changes
Make changes as needed to ensure success
Document all activities
Meet with leadership and keep them aprised of progress, setbacks and course of correction
Champion your recovery successes
You are fighting an uphill battle ---- marketing is even more important!

25. CRM Implementation Project Example
Recovery Execution and Results
Estimates more accurate, delivered new requirements on time and on budget
Steering committee adapted for all future large roll outs
Able to complete new project (updated requirements) within 2 months of original schedule

26. Lessons Learned (The Hard Way)
Summarize all discoveries into one document
Review how project was recovered with sponsors and stakeholders
Implement changes in PMO process and planning (if possible)
Let’s make sure the organization doesn’t get into this mess again

27. A Few Case Studies
Let’s share some personal examples where the problems were with:
Troubled Personnel
Troubled Processes
Personnel – 1) tech resources not engaged, didn’t provide estimates 2) technical resources not current on new technology, felt they would be replaced, were not being trained
Processes – QA processes don’t involve business, no regression testing, no validation of fixes = poor product quality

28. Q & A