Note: For information on Project Review Mentoring Workshops, scroll to the bottom of this page.
Projects in trouble can burn through $100K, $500K, $1M or more a month. It can be both a business investment and a career investment to bring in a veteran project troubleshooter for 1-2 days. Neal has reviewed over 100 projects in trouble (mostly software/IT) ranging from 10 members to over 500 members.
The reviews are professionally conducted, praising good work and noting areas of improvement. We have all made mistakes and, truth be told, there are likely a few more in each of our futures, especially if we seek to take on complex projects and maximize efficiency.
When the dust settles, the project review should be viewed by all as a positive event not just for the business but for all participants.
This web page introduces you to the process that Neal has defined and follows for reviewing a project in trouble. “Trouble” could mean many things, but it can include schedule slippage, quality issues, exceeding budget, poorly managed expectations, scope creep and weak change control, ineffective monitoring and control, and weak project manager, to name a few.
Objectives of a Neal Whitten project review
- Never the aim to embarrass anyone. Attacking problems is encouraged and welcomed; attacking people is out of bounds. The review meeting should stay on a positive footing. Everyone should be encouraged to participate constructively; openness and candidness are essential. It’s only natural that the presenters may feel discomfort and uneasiness from the constructive criticism and probing questions. However, without frankness and digging beneath the surface, the review would lose much of its value.
- Perceived as a positive event for both the business and for all participants.
- Promote lessons from which everyone can benefit.
- Seek to identify the major problems and major areas for praise. Not looking to find every problem or spend excessive time on minor problems.
- Recommend next steps to turn the project around.
- Review the project in the shortest amount of time that is reasonable.
In-person superior to virtual
Project reviews ideally should be conducted in person, face-to-face. Whenever possible, Neal strongly prefers in-person reviews for the team for efficiency and personal impact. However, with the prevalence of remote workers, it is often not feasible for the key project players to travel to a single location. Therefore, project reviews may be conducted remotely.
Project review process
Here is a high-level view of the process that Neal follows:
- Agreement has been reached and documented for the time and place of the review, the cost, and the sequence of activities that will take place.
- Neal requests and receives various project documents to get onboard with the project.
- The project manager and his/her team are instructed by Neal to prepare a set of slides describing the state of the project. Neal receives a copy of these slides two days before the review. Slide topics include:
-
- Overview of customer requirements and product scope/specifications
- Organization of project, including roles and responsibilities
- Staffing and skills
- Overview of actual versus baselined schedules and milestones
- Lessons learned from other relevant projects
- Project management processes followed
- Development process (or equivalent) followed
- Change control and scope creep
- Quality perspective
- Customer relationship; customer expectations
- Support from external groups
- Support from senior management
- Project morale
- Accountability issues
- Project budget assessment
- Business and legal issues
- Top three areas noteworthy of praise and top three problems
- Forecast of project outlook in terms of risk (high, medium, low) of meeting the next major milestone and the final delivery date
- What needs to be done differently from this point forward for this project to complete “successfully”?
- The project review meeting is conducted. Depending on the project, it will likely be scheduled for about a day. We are not looking for every problem. The focus is the top problems as well as the top areas of praise.
- A scribe is appointed to take notes during the review. Neal will instruct when a note is to be recorded such as an item of praise or a problem. (If Neal stops to take notes, it slows down the tempo and pace of the meeting.)
- At the end of the review, Neal presents the review results to those who participated from the project team, appropriate management, and outside project managers who observed the review for instructional purposes.
- Neal creates a short report for appropriate distribution.
- The project manager develops an action plan to address the most important problems identified.
- Optionally, Neal returns periodically to inspect the health of the project.
Points of interest
As you can see, the project review event is a mentoring experience for the project manager, his/her team, other PMs who choose to attend, as well as managers who choose to attend.
A major benefit of performing a project review is that the project stakeholders, in preparing for the project review, will correct many of their problems before they are publicly revealed. Let’s not penalize stakeholders for finding and resolving their own problems. Personally, Neal wants the project team to look great in a review. The more problems they correct prior to the review, the more we all win.
From a senior management or executive perspective, the review is typically seen as extremely beneficial. They witness a project that is off track and burning money and people resources is reset onto a positive path. They experience improvement in the application of project management best practices across the organization. And they see longer-term results in the form of lower costs, increased productivity, and improved schedule and budget commitments—all leading to improved client relationships.
The project review is intended to find major problems and recommend where to go from here. Success going forward is not automatic nor guaranteed. It must be nurtured by the project manager, his/her team members, the project sponsor, and other appropriate management.
Project Review Mentoring Workshop
Institutionalizing project management best practices across an organization is a work in progress. It never ends. A great tool that promotes this objective is the Project Review Mentoring Workshop.
This workshop is an effective technique to mentor project managers and their key stakeholders from across an organization in the proper application of project management best practices. The delivery medium is conducting project reviews in a classroom setting where the overall health of multiple projects is assessed and areas of both praise and improvement are identified. These workshops are typically 2 days in duration and approximately half a day is dedicated to conducting a review on each of the selected 3-5 projects.
The project manager and up to four members of each project are invited to attend. The audience should total about 20, no more than 30. The attendees can also include observers that are lead people from across the organization, including management.
Consider Neal coming to your organization to conduct one or more Project Review Mentoring Workshops. Once you experience how Neal conducts the workshop, you can choose to have a qualified person within your shop periodically conduct future workshops. Your investment into this no-nonsense practice can set your organization up for success and pay handsome dividends down the road.