Figure out how much it would cost to turn around an ailing project in your organization.
On today's project dashboard at your large health-care conglomerate: the status of the ambitious $7 million development project to build a document management platform that aims to integrate all of your acquired health systems and will pay itself down in its first year of operation. The bad news? The project is eight months behind, and forecasting at 50% over budget and 60% below functional requirements. The good news? Well, the project dashboard works, anyway.
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You've got a runaway project, and it will take some very hard decisions, and more money still, to get it back on track. To make sure you throw some good money after the bad, you'll put together a project recovery team of outside experts who specialize in cutting off the kind of front-page disaster your project is hurtling toward. This project-within-a-project will spend six months evaluating original requirements, scuttling pieces that are hopelessly off track, refereeing the staff and vendor disputes that are paralyzing progress, and, ultimately, completely reworking the original goals, budget and time line into a streamlined, executable project plan.
"The very first thing to understand is, what is a project's definition of 'done'? Or even a small part of 'done'?" says Rodney Macon, a project recovery specialist with 30 years' experience in software development and project management, including lead roles for Fidelity Investments and Electronic Data Systems. Expect to take two to three months to sort things out, Macon says, and then another few months to reset the project plan, which you will review and recast on a weekly basis.
But that doesn't mean the project grinds to a halt for six months. The key to a successful turnaround is to keep at least some parts of the project moving—identify and achieve a couple of small wins on the user interface, for example—while you reset the overall plan, trash the chokepoints and build momentum, Macon says.
"Most projects get in trouble because of the basics," he explains. "Recovery is about getting back to the basics: What will it take to get this project out the door?"
To see the details behind this Project Planner and fill in your own estimates, click on the "Get the Tool" icon above and download the interactive worksheet.
Tools: Planners 
