How many times have you started the day with your activities all planned out only to arrive at the end of the day and look back on how little you actually accomplished on your planned activities? I know that happens to me much more than I’d care to admit. Some days I go to bed and realize I didn’t even get to touch what I planned to do. Why is this? Because we plan based on our own thoughts of how we ‘want’ things to go. We plan based usually on a best-case scenario. But, as we all know, life gets in the way of these best-laid plans and reality hits us like a ton of bricks.
Like life, our projects often don’t go as planned either. In fact, I can honestly say that I’ve never had a project go completely as planned. To go as planned would mean that I never had to make changes to the project schedule, or resource plans or the budget. That has simple never happened. And I would imagine it’s probably never happened for any project manager in the history of project management.
The best way to minimize all of this is to allow as much time as possible for ‘reasonable’ project planning. You can’t allocate half the budget to planning – that’s why I say ‘reasonable.’ But allocating a day or two to planning – including requirements definition and detailing is simply not reasonable.
So, you’ve planned for a reasonable amount of time and things still aren’t going as planned. If it’s a normal project then that’s expected and you roll with the punches. You adjust the schedule as needed and you implement change orders when those somewhat grey requirements become more black and white. But when the project derails in a more major way, what do you do? Here are three steps to getting the problematic project back on track and hopefully heading toward a successful conclusion that will result in a satisfied customer:
Halt forward progress and huddle
Stop the project that is moving down the path of failure. Convince the customer that it is in everyone’s best interest to take this action at this time in order to not waste further funds on a sinking ship. Gather the project team, the project sponsor and the entire customer team together to discuss the problems encountered and this three-step course of action that must be taken at this time.
Rework the project schedule, resource forecast, and budget accordingly
Rework the schedule in draft form based on some replanning using a productive project tool such as Seavus' Project Planner. Identify corrective action, risk and issue assessment, and then moving forward with the right tasks to complete the project. This reworked schedule will be the basis for the third step of re-kicking off the project. At this time you also need to rework the budget and resource forecasts for the rest of the project because these are also critical discussion points for going forward with the customer.