Course Description:
Every organization has troubled projects.  While there is no precise definition of a troubled project, it’s safe to say when a project significantly exceeds its cost, schedule, and/or scope allocations the project is in trouble and needs immediate corrective action.  The focus of this course is on understanding a troubled project’s background, determining the underlying root causes of a troubled project, providing a detailed step-by-step process to recover the project, closing the project recovery effort, and sharing lessons learned with the organization to prevent future troubled projects.

Projects don’t falter on their own accord; there are usually underlying root causes that contribute to a project’s poor performance.  When encountered with a troubled project, most organizations have a tendency to make rash decisions.  These actions may include: reassigning the project manager and team members, increasing or decreasing the budget, adjusting the schedule, reducing scope, and/or removing product features.  In most cases, none of these actions will aid the project’s recovery because they don’t directly address the root causes.

The framework presented in this course will illustrate how recovering a project is the same as starting a new project.  That is, the project recovery plan will have defined start and end dates, clear objectives and deliverables, and a comprehensive stakeholder communication plan to garner and maintain support.  At the end of this course, participants will be armed with the tools, techniques, best practices, and checklists to create a successful project recovering strategy.


Course Objectives: 
• Understanding why projects get into trouble or fail through a review of reports, studies, and the instructor’s experience
• Developing a step-by-step process to recover troubled projects
• Discussing the key attributes needed to recover a project
• Describing tools and techniques for performing an objective assessment of a project
• Identifying the root causes of a project’s challenges
• Creating an effective plan to recover the project based on root cause analysis
• Integrating and executing the recovery plan into the current project environment
• Closing the project and applying lessons learned to the organization