DAY 1 -

UNDERSTAND CONTEXT & CONCEPTS OF PROJECT RECOVERY

·         All The Steps of The Journey To Come. Ways to get mountain climbing (and running projects) wrong!

·         Create a take-away Assessment Charter for real-world use (and use In-Class)

·         Build a Job-Aid tool for defining & assessing "Trouble”

·         Recognise the ways in which projects become stressed and fail

·         Respond to the 8 Project Challenges in the 4 Project contexts

·         Anticipate the People Dimensions of Troubled Projects

·         Conduct a Methodical Assessment using an Analysis Framework

·         Start from a clear foundation: Take away tools for Framing and Kick-Off, for Data Gathering, Analysis, Diagnosis, Selection, Recovery and into Withdrawal

·         Construct a job-aid that charts the flow of steps and authorities in assessment & recovery

·         Target creating a healthy project by assessing the project’s linkage to the organisation’s purpose and view of value.

·         Facilitate senior management cost-of-recovery decisions and "Faster, Better Cheaper” trade-off.

·         Check product development approaches in use match organisational needs for Design first vs. Adaptive and Iterative (agile)

·         Map planning, control, management and governance to well know standards (such as ISO 21500, the PMBoK Guide®, PRINCE2® and agile)

DAY 2 -

STEPS, TOOLS & TECHNIQUES FOR ASSESSMENT & DECISIONS

·         Apply the secrets of assessment success; Preparing for the assessment with care (and speed)

·         Establish the right tone, assessing the assessment’s trigger and frame the charter with the Recovery Sponsor

·         Source competent analysis (& recovery) team members

·         Plan communication, create awareness of recovery needs, facilitate Kick-off with Sponsors, Recovery Team and troubled project team

·         Align the recovering project with senior leader’s views of value and politics

·         Express estimated benefits versus probable costs for Business Case (Re-)evaluation of business risks

·         Use Information Gathering techniques matched to the challenges of conducting each individual assessment

·         Use a wide variety of best of breed Analysis & Diagnosis tools for synthesising Findings and Recommendations

·         Respond to project team member’s feelings and mood

·         Assess the team’s technical capability vs. project’s challenges and recommend a balance of Cost/ Time/ Scope/ Quality/ Risk/ HSSE/ etc

DAY 3 -

FORMULATING CONCLUSIONS AND PROPOSING RECOVERY ACTIONS

·         Propose pragmatic ‘next-steps’ aligned with organisationalMission, Values, Politics & Vision

·         Anticipate and manage Resistance to Change and limits on ability to absorb Change. Insight from Machiavelli’s The Prince & Harvard professor John Kotter’s "See Feel Change”

·         Analyse project team and recovery team capacity

·         Analyse effectiveness of ‘Control of Baseline Change to identify projects struggling with ‘churn’

·         Review and amend (create) Progress Report Structures & Content, Iteratively monitor status and update plans to chart project ‘Next-Step’ options

·         Recognise actual achievement through sound use of quality principles and practices for Verification & Validation

·         Analyse and fix estimating issues

·         Generate reliable preliminary and final audit findings with proposed actions using a proven report structure

·         Make the ‘First Kill or Cure’ decision

DAY 4 -

IMPLEMENTING INITIAL RECOVERY ACTIONS & TUNING THE RECOVERY PROCESS

·         Iteratively implement recovery actions for step-wise development of realistic baselines (Stabilise planning, monitoring & control capability)

·         Resolve problems and escalate issues to correct authority levels

·         Stabilise politics and address both abdication of responsibility and micro over-management

·         Curb excessive change to goals & to technical solutions

·         Use Verification as the antidote to Scope Creep

·         Remove people, add people and stabilise team dynamics and morale

·         Amend recommended recovery actions to decision authorities

·         Make subsequent (harder) ‘Kill or Continue?’ recommendations

DAY 5 -

ENDING PROJECT RECOVERY AND ESTABLISHING THE ORGANISATION’S TROUBLE AVOIDANCE AND RECOVERY CAPABILITY

·         Gauge when to recovery is over

·         Making the trouble-shooters the delivery team or Withdrawing the recovery team’s support of the original project team

·         Close the recovery phase. Final Kill/ Continue decision

·         Permanent trouble avoidance and trouble response team

·         Recognise troubled project early warning signs

·         Why we will always have troubled projects (because project problems are based in people’s ambitious aspirations)

·         Course conclusions: Review job-aids created, tools & techniques discussed and practiced, the wider methodical framework and transference of learning to the work-place