Project Recovery
Get your project back on track.
Projects rarely fail all at once.
The warning signs usually build over time.
Missed milestones
Rising costs
Changing requirements
Misaligned expectations
And sometimes the project team is working harder than ever while confidence in the project continues to fall.
When that happens, the answer isn’t necessarily a new project manager,
a compressed schedule, or asking everyone to work harder.
The first step is understanding what’s really going wrong.
We help you diagnose the underlying problems, realign the project
and its stakeholders, and establish a practical plan for moving forward.
Projects Fail When Symptoms Are Mistaken for Problems
A missed deadline is a problem.
But it may not be the problem.
Budget overruns, scope creep, stakeholder resistance, and unresolved issues are often symptoms of problems that began much earlier:
- The business problem was never clearly understood
- Stakeholders began with different expectations
- Requirements, assumptions, or priorities changed
- Roles and decision-making were unclear
- Risks and organizational change weren’t adequately planned
- The original project plan no longer reflects reality
Trying to force the project back onto its original schedule doesn’t address these problems. Neither does simply replacing the project manager.
Before prescribing a solution, you need a diagnosis.
What Project Recovery Does
Our Project Recovery approach draws heavily on the same disciplines we use to help projects Start Right™—particularly Discovery and Planning.
We work with project leadership, team members, and key stakeholders to:
- Determine what’s actually causing the project to struggle
- Revisit the original problem, objectives, assumptions, and expectations
- Assess the project’s current health, risks, and major points of misalignment
- Identify gaps in planning, communication, decision-making, and change management
- Realign stakeholders around what success means now
- Determine what should continue, what needs to change, and what may need to stop
- Establish a realistic recovery plan
The objective isn’t to wrestle the existing project plan back into submission.
It’s to understand what went wrong and determine what the project needs now to deliver a successful outcome.
What You Receive
A Project Recovery engagement provides:
- A clear problem diagnosis: a shared understanding of what’s actually going wrong and why
- A project health assessment: an objective view of major gaps, risks, and points of misalignment
- Stakeholder realignment: renewed agreement on objectives, expectations, priorities, and responsibilities
- A prioritized recovery roadmap: practical actions focused on the issues that matter most
- An updated project approach: recommended changes to scope, planning, governance, communication, risk, or change management
- Clear decision points: what should continue, what should change—and what may need to stop
The result isn’t another status report.
It’s a shared understanding of where the project stands, what’s preventing progress, and what needs to happen next.
Recovery
in Action
Situation:
A large organization was implementing a service ticketing application across several independently operating help desks. Progress had stalled, communication was centralized through the project manager, and the project was failing.
Insight:
The problem was not primarily the technology. The management and communication structure was preventing the help desks from collaborating directly, managing interdependencies, and resolving issues effectively.
Outcome:
The organization replaced the centralized approach with direct collaboration, an interdependency management group, and stronger governance. The project was successfully recovered and ultimately viewed by senior management as a success.
Get Back on Track
You don’t need to know exactly what’s wrong before asking for help.
That’s what the first conversation is for.
We’ll start by understanding the project as it exists today—not where the original plan says it should be—and help determine the most practical way forward.