Episode 15 — Project Recovery and Turnaround Part 1

ANDY CROWE ● BILL YATES ● NICK WALKER NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  This is our every week chance to meet and talk about what matters most to you as a professional project manager.  We talk about getting started, getting certified, getting the stuff of project management done. I’m your host, Nick Walker, and beside me are our in-house experts, Andy Crowe and Bill Yates.  They are project managers themselves.  They mentor other project managers and those working to become one.  And guys, today’s topic addresses what might be to some teams sort of an elephant in the room, the fact that many projects don’t move along as we originally envision.  In fact, Andy, sometimes, as a friend of mine once put it, you know, when the manure hits the combine blades... ANDY CROWE:  Right, the fertilizer hits the ventilation system, sure. NICK WALKER:  Yeah, right. ANDY CROWE:  Yeah, and you know what, a lot of times figuring out what to do with a troubled project, with a project that’s in distress, and where do you start?  And a lot of PMs spend time in this space.  This isn’t an unfamiliar territory for a lot of people. BILL YATES:  Yeah, people should not be surprised by this.  This happens.  This is a part of project management.  There’s a quote by William A. Cohen.  He says:  “All successful projects are simply a long series of adversities that must be overcome.  Adversity is normal.” NICK WALKER:  So we just need to look reality in the face and say, okay, this is just going to happen.  Adversity is going to happen.  But is there a difference between just simple adversity, you know, little roadblocks that come in the way, or something that is really in flames? ANDY CROWE:  Well, there certainly can be.  A lot of times project managers start a project.  They don’t have any input into the finish date.  They don’t have input into the schedule, necessarily, or the budget.  And now they kind of have to find some way to meet the goals of the project.  By the time that they get added, they’re already in trouble. NICK WALKER:  Yeah.  So sometimes it’s even almost too late.  So what do you do at that point?  How do you sort of regroup and pick up? BILL YATES:  Yeah, and that’s what we’ll focus on today is looking at those troubled projects, those that are in recovery mode, those that need turnaround. ANDY CROWE:  Right.  And so Bill, maybe not just the ones in recovery mode, but the ones that need to be in recovery mode. BILL YATES:  Right. ANDY CROWE:  Maybe they’re going along, business as usual.  They haven’t detected trouble yet.  So let me ask you, if you’re thinking about a project, what’s the canary in the coal mine to you to know if there are problems on the project, to know if it’s time to kind of circle the wagons and start thinking about it differently, put it in recovery mode?  When do you – what are some of the triggers? BILL YATES:  Yeah.  There are – that’s the perfect place to start.  There are many triggers to me, many signs to look at to detect trouble.  And some of those are real soft skill type things.  You’ve got to read people.  Others are hardcore metrics.  So you start, if I think about soft skill stuff, Andy, I think about some of the past projects that I’ve worked on where things, the train came off the rails.  And many times you could pick up on it in your interaction with a customer.  The customer’s attitude towards you or towards the project or towards the team changed. ANDY CROWE:  Right. BILL YATES:  In some cases, the customer disappeared.  They no longer had an interest in the project.  And that was scary.  That’s scary. ANDY CROWE:  Well, as long as the money’s still flowing, I guess it’s not all that scary. BILL YATES:  Yeah, right.  Yeah, you may think, you know, well, there are times when I wish my customer would go away so we could get something done.