IT Project Recovery

9 Steps to Turn Your

Troubled IT-Project

Around

Your project is failing and you need to get it back on track?

I support project sponsors, project managers, and project teams to recover as much as possible from a failing IT-Project. Using my project management skills which have been built up through many years of practical experience, I have been successfully recovering IT-Projects in diverse industry sectors since 2006.

Services

How can I help you?

These are the standard services that I offer to you and your project team to help you recover your IT-project:

Health Check

Not sure if your project is on track to deliver in time, budget, and quality?

Request an objective assessment of your project today.

Together with the project manager and other major stakeholders, I will review the current project status.

As a result of the health check, you can expect honest, independent feedback on the state of your project. And, if appropriate, actionable recommendations for improvement.

Project Recovery Coach

Your project needs to be recovered today?

I will coach you, your project manager and/or your project team through the recovery process.

You can expect the existing project team to receive the guidance they need to complete the project recovery as effectively as possible.

If desired, you can also expect the coachee(s) to develop their IT-Project recovery skills.

Keep On Track

Safeguard your inflight project or project portfolio.

I will perform a regular, objective review of your project or project portfolio together with your project manager and project sponsor.

These reviews, in line with international quality standards, will help to ensure that any issues are recognized early and that recovery actions are tracked to competion.

You can expect to reduce cost overruns and improve timely delivery across your project portfolio.

9 steps for a successful IT-project recovery

Every project is unique. Every project recovery will also be unique to that project and that project team. That said, the project recovery processes remains the same.

Here are the 9 steps for a successful IT-project recovery that I normally use. This 9 step IT-project recovery process works well on classical/waterfall projects, agile projects, and hybrid projects.

Recognize that the project is off plan
Analyze the current situation and identify the main issues
Be aware that continuing “as you have been” will not recover the project. One or more significant changes are necessary
Define what the project recovery goal is
Create a recovery plan with clearly defined deliverables, actions, and responsibilities
Communicate and win support for the recovery plan
Design a clear reporting which is understood by all the main stakeholders
Start the recovery plan
Closely track the effectiveness of the recovery plan and act quickly if further changes are necessary

I can help you with all these steps…

Some examples of my results…

“I never had someone complement me on the team’s before…”

The order backlog contained over 200 requests and delivery was taking an average of 3 months. Creating a set of standard services for the most common orders, implementing standardized processes and a simple order tracking system streamlined the delivery process and reduced incidents. On average requests were serviced in under 3 days, the order backlog reduced to under 10, and the total number of servers supported per person doubled.

Recovered 9 month delay to achieve targeted 3 Million in annual savings

ITSM rollout project expected to achieve 3 Million in annual savings was 9 months in delay and the client expected to have to pay the incumbant supplier parrallel to new supplier – which would make the project a financial failure. A clear focus, management support, a highly motivated team, and 8 months later the project was back on track and could be handed back to the previous project manager.

Revitalized agile software development programm

The agile software development team had previously been supported by developers from Russia. After the Ukraine war, the Russian team were replaced but not perfoming well. Resolving issues surrounding an ineffective skill mix, recruiting and onboarding process issues, team structure and culture issues, the program started to perform well again.

Resolve delivery issues in DevOps project

The team was suffering due to high levels of incidents. The team felt a need to protect themselves by sticking closely to established processes. Working with the team to create a sense of ownership for the service delivered instead of the processes governing their work was a major turning point. Helping the team to resolve the causes of issues eliminated over half the incidents in a few weeks, which in turn dramatically increased team moral and effectiveness.

Non-performing projects in portfolio reduced by 65%

Coach and train project managers to improve project delivery for a portfolio of projects with a total contract volume of over 700 Million. Inside a year, the number of projects not being delivered in time, budget, scope, and quality reduced by 65%.