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This is the United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, ART Grant Projects
Project Recovery and Panel Discussion held on June 11, 2013 and facilitated by Laura
Howell at the 2013 ART Grant Annual Training Meeting.
I'll give a brief introduction on project recovery, and then go ahead and introduce
the panelist and poise some questions and hope that they are the experts in the field
that they claim to be. [Laughter] We'll open the floor up to you to ask the panelist question
as well provided there is time for it and then we'll conclude then we'll go into the
closing discussion of the day.
Project Recovery is initiated when a project has deviated from the plan. Everybody creates
a plan, and the unexpected occurs and you end up with high risk and your project becomes
at risk which means you have probably realized all your high impact, or most your high impact
risks, you need to go through a series of corrective actions to the get project back
on course. Those corrective actions and the process of identifying corrective actions
and a corrective course that is the notion of project recovery. And, project recovery
rarely lies inherently within the project team. Project recovery process begins by involving
first the project sponsor and then external stakeholders as well to ensure that the correct
course of action is taken. A couple of outcomes of project recovery, once project recovery
is initiated, include a revised scope or timeline which may be abbreviated or elongated. Abbreviated
means that the scope is limited you might have less work to do and then your timeline
becomes abbreviated. The timeline may become elongated if you are looking for the right
solution and you want to make sure you do it right to avoid all those costs after implementation
where you have to bring all your vendors back in and have a higher cost of reengaging them
to address issues that may have been resolved up front. Another outcome of project recovery
are new plans and processes to address the issues that caused slippage.
Now, I'll go ahead and introduce our panel today, I'll start with the gentleman directly
to my left who is Keith Mayo. He has a Has a Master of Science in Innovation and Technology
Management, a Master of Arts in Business Management from Webster University and a Bachelor degree
in International Relations. He has been with DRT Strategies and he is a Senior Manager
for USDA Programs and he has over twenty years of leadership experience working with IT projects.
So we welcome Mr. Mayo. [Applause] The next gentleman I want to introduce is
Michael Duffy, he is the Chief Operating Officer of DRT Strategies, and I think he might be
a familiar face for some of you that were here last year where he did participate in
the panel discussion so he is making a repeat appearance for him. He oversees the daily
operations for information technology and organizational management. Prior to DRT he
served 23 years in federal civil service with over a decade at SES and most notably as Deputy
Assistant Secretary and Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Department of Treasury.
[Applause] OK, Errol, does Errol even require an introduction?
[Laughter] Does anybody not know Errol? [Laughter] He is known to all of you on a first name
basis at this point in time. We do have Errol Baker joining and what we hope that he will
bring to the discussion is from the focal point that he knows what the states have been
through. He has that inherent knowledge that will be able to kind of provide guidance from
that perspective. He does have a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor
of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology. So he
is a technology guy. We welcome Errol. [Applause] And lastly, we have Mr. Jim Ward. Jim Ward
has an MBA in Operations and Systems Management from Indiana University and a Bachelor of
Arts in Mathematics from Marian College. He is with DRT Strategies and he is a Senior
IT Strategist and IT Program Manager. He has over 30 years of experience in leadership
expertise ranging from IT strategic planning through applications implementation and managing
customer relationships. With that we welcome him. [Applause]
Gentlemen I want to thank you and welcome you again. The natural progression of project
monitoring inherently requires adjustments. However, project recovery is employed when
the total project outcome is at risk. What are methods used to determine or indicators
a project needs to initiate project recovery? OK, when I get this type of question, what comes to
mind is a few examples as far as... I've done several projects before where we were weren't
happy, things weren't great, but we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. A
lot of times though, the light at the end of the tunnel, things aren't working out as
great as you expected. So, when that starts to happen, you know what are you going to
do about it and what are some things you can do about it when that train is coming? What
I've seen with projects before is examples often of deadlines...you start thinking, "Hey
I got this great plan laid out and all I'm going to do is hit this, this, this, and that.
And, all of a sudden, this one starts to slip, the next one starts to slip, the third one
starts to slip, something's happened, something is going on here. You gotta look at what is
causing that and the overall impact. You have that issue or you have expenses. You have certain, you look
at a project cost, schedule, and performance. All of a sudden, your cost is starting to
go up, what's going on with that? How can your people come back and keep adding more
and more money? Well, this is becoming more and more expensive so now you have that issue.
You start having personnel issues. You start meeting with a Program Director. He starts
to say 'Hey something is going on?" Excuse me. But as far as deadlines being missed,
cost going up, requirements being missed, your failing tests, your failing assessments,
things that come up all of a sudden those things start to hit you. Your project's in
trouble. You start to think as to what you need to do to set things straight to get back
on the right track. If you stay on the current track, you are going to hit that train that
is coming towards you. I think Keith is exactly right. Certainly when you think of all the
risk areas we just talked about and I like to throw quality in the mix, we talked about
cost, schedule, scope, and quality. And really if you approach it in those four areas, and
I think what's key is first identifying, have a process in place like we talked about, having
a plan to address those areas, then being able to identify and assess what's going on
and then that will drive you into some type of mitigation plan. It's important that you
stay focused on those primary areas and then you increase your chances if you have that
plan in place of coming up with that corrective action plan.
Project recovery, it's very common and over a third of IT projects amongst the sample
size population of surveys conducted fall into some state of high risk as I mentioned
before. What kinds of information and reports are useful for performing analysis to determine
a course of action in project recovery? Jim I think you might have some experience in
this area. Yea, I think the main thing you find when
you are in project recovery is trying to figure out what your new sideboards are so you can
go back and look at your original charter and objectives; find out from your sponsor
what is possible and possibly redefining what they are trying to achieve or sharpen what
they are trying to achieve so that you can focus on that first. The thing that you run
into with project recovery in particular, in particular when you are trying to manage
the client relationship is often you have lost credibility with the client. Things that
have been going along pretty well or as Keith was saying, you kind of had the feeling everything
was going along well, everybody is thinking everything is going well and suddenly there
is a surprise or something that you weren't tracking comes up and you realize that you
have to now recover. Well, now you have a creditability problem with the client and
it's not necessarily your fault, but it does mean that you need to rebuild that and because
the first inclination is to try and assign blame but meanwhile that train is still moving
down the track. So, you need to be able to rebuild the partnership with the sponsor and
other people within your organization and other stakeholders that need to make you succeed.
So, it is important to build that credibility early. Part of that is getting back to the
charter and scope of what you are trying to achieve, crafting it in a fashion that you
think is achievable, and setting up short-term, near-term flag posts to demonstrate that you
are back on track. Now because that is what then starts to build credibility with the
client. So, when trying to recover a project, don't swing for the fences, try and work it
back on to a path along with the sponsor. That's what I would...And, I'll add on to
that as Jim mentioned as far as something to have up front again as with a project,
you always want to have a plan in place. Never just jump right into a task, a project, and
say hey we're going to go ahead and achieve these things. Go ahead and take a step back
and have a plan. So once you have a plan in place, what is actually occurring? What's
your plan versus the actual? I look at is as far as what information what do I need.
I need to start looking at what are the signs OK this is the path that I set, what's giving
me hints that I'm going off that particular path. There's all of a sudden I said I would
spend this amount of money by this time and all of sudden we are seeing that that is increasing
more so. I said I'd have this task by such and such time, I'd hire this person or have
such and such done, so we are starting to look at we are going off of my plan. So the
actual information is different than what is planned. So I need to start gathering that
type of information. And, also what I think is beneficial to myself looking for or looking
at what resources are available because now that I see that train's coming towards me
and I make some changes here, in most cases, I'm not going to do it myself or I'm not going
to be able to do it all myself. So, when I say resources it's people -- what additional
people do I have?, what people are on my current staff?, do I need to hire?, or do I need to
go up the chain of command as far as leadership and say I need this expertise to do such and
such? So, what resources are available? Is there additional funding or is what I have,
what I have? Or, is there additional time? Can I go back and say hey, can I stretch this
out a little bit further? Do I have more time? Or they come back to me and say guess what,
you have zero time but you have additional resources -- you have additional you know
funding. I need to look at what is available so I can start putting my final plan together.
When looking at project recovery, it's almost a new project. So you say, what's my project
plan? What do I need to gather to go from this direction to my new direction? If that's
the case, what additional resources do I have to make that happen? And, then the last thing
is organizational buy-in. Organizational buy-in as far as from leadership. I'm not going to
make anything happen if my boss is way offline or my relationship is way offline and if it
really important to the organization, can I push it up to a higher priority? If I can
do that, than I may get those resources to make stuff happen. It's not just looking internal
as to what's going on? What resources do I have? But, it's also looking up top as far
as additional buy-in, support, and prioritization. I'd actually like to add when you think and
I think often times when we do these visits I've talked about project management as a
story if you will with a beginning, middle and an end. And, everything sort of comes
together. In my mind from a reporting standpoint, we are talking about reporting and analysis
as it relates to leveraging those two pieces to recover. Practically, everything you have
created for the project, if you have done it right, you can leverage that to identify
when you are in that situation. And, you can, it will lead you towards what steps you need
to take to correct where you are. So when I say that I'm specifically talking about
certainly status reporting. Typically, there are status reports. Certainly if there is
an issue with the project, somewhere in there it will document what it is. And, if it is
documenting it then you'll obviously have the opportunity to come up with a corrective
action plan. Project schedule -- same thing. If there's a slippage with your monitoring,
you'll know exactly when that is occurring. You should also know why it's occurring. And,
then if you are doing it right, you should be looking to mitigate. Work breakdown structure-
same thing there. Gives you that more of the detailed look of
the work packages so you'll get to see in a greater level of detail in the project schedule
exactly what is going on and I often use that to determine what kind of adjustments you
need to be make. One final piece and this is certainly not an all comprehensive one,
certainly from a budget standpoint in all of these projects we know they're typically
deliverables based so there is a deliverable associated with the cost so you know exactly
what's due, when it's due, who is supposed to be supporting it, so you should have that
understanding of if something isn't right with the budget, how do you correct it. I
think as we do these visits we talk a lot about forecasting and spend planning. And,
the importance of forecasting and spend planning. And, that certainly is a tool that can be
used, report that can be used to help you conduct a more thorough analysis to get you
to the point where you are still going to be successful if regardless of what your experiences
is related to remember the four areas where we talked about cost, scope, schedule or quality.
There is one other thing I would like to suggest and that is if you can implement earned value
management that can really help. Because what earned value management does is relates what
you are spending versus what has actually been delivered.
One of the reasons why projects will sometimes get in trouble is because there isn't that
tie between the value delivered and the cost. So you might be on budget, but you actually
haven't achieved as much as you thought you would so if you are using the earned value
method, that really takes the relationship between the value being delivered and costs
of things incurred and making sure are staying in line. That can also help you not panic
because sometimes the schedule gets extended but it doesn't necessarily cost you anymore
money. So, that might mean you in fact aren't in as bad of shape as you might think unless
you have a drop-dead deadline like Keith was talking about in his case which is trouble
but it helps provide perspective and take the pieces Errol was talking about and see
what the relationships between them are so that you understand how to adjust in order
to get back on track. Trust your project artifacts and the work you have already done to help
you identify how to engage a plan and you probably also already communicated your plan
to you stakeholder and your client and your sponsors and what can happen now that you
deviated. You probably need to re-communicate the plan and identify a solution prior to
communicating with the stakeholder and I think that kind of weaves into another question
we might bring up like...This may be challenging news to communicate with internal leadership
as well as external stakeholders especially if your awareness campaigns have commenced.
So if you have already started your marketing campaign.
So, I pose to the panel, if it's necessary to reset the project baseline, what are best
practices and communication tools that can be used to amicably communicate with all Stakeholders?
I'll take that one. [Laughter] I've done this already. [Laughter] So this is the double-edge
is no way you are getting around where you are if a project is in trouble. So, you might
as well come right out and tell the stakeholders exactly what the score is. It's helpful, but
not necessary, it's helpful if you can go in there with a little bit of a story that
says we've diagnosed what's gone on and we have a solution. But, sometimes you don't
to do the diagnosis and I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. Sometimes you
just have to go in and tell the boss, or the Governor, or whoever is your ultimate stakeholder
that to whom you are accountable that the project is off track. And, getting that communication
one project I had that was very public project, albeit a public website project that was promised
to the Attorney General, Attorney General of the United States, by said date and it
wasn't going to happen. There are lots of reasons why it wasn't going to happen. That's
immaterial at the moment but, the point is, it wasn't going to happen. And, I had the
dubious task of providing that information to the Chief of Staff. Was I scared? Absolutely
without a doubt. But the right thing to do is to do is what I did and that was to communicated
it to my boss, and his boss, and the Chief of Staff as rapidly as I became aware that
we were not going to meet this very publicly promised due date. And, I was able to provide
a roadmap of sorts on how we were going to get the project back on track. So, I survived
that one. How barely I survived it, I honestly have no idea. The Chief of Staff was gracious
enough not to tell me that. But, you live to fight another day in those circumstances.
As you move forward, after you go through the initial notification, then the real work
begins. Now you have to communicate what's going on, how are you going to fix this problem
and your stakeholders are going to want that information as rapidly as it can be made available.
This is where getting into some real hard candor comes into play. There's two aspects
to this. One is an accountability issue. If you are the project manager, you are accountable.
It doesn't matter who messed up behind you, in front of you, or beside you, you are accountable.
So, lay that one right out on the table because the other thing is you need to make sure that
the stakeholders understand that you're holding yourself accountable and that you are going
to fix whatever it is that is that isn't fixed right now or is broken. If you side-step that,
if you try and push the accountability off on somebody else, well, your stakeholders
are going to start looking to those other people probably for the answers. Part of recovery
is making sure your stakeholders understand that you're responsible, you're accountable,
and you're going to fix the problem. The other thing is actually having good answers to the
hard questions. What really went wrong? There is a concept in quality management and I don't
know how many of you are familiar with the ISO 9001 standards for quality management.
There is a couple of really great concepts within that body of practice. One of them
is the concept of root cause analysis. In the world of ISO, it is the process of continuous
improvement to achieve quality. And, there is the concept of a non-conformance. A non-conformance
is basically anytime something didn't go the way it was planned. It's not just a function
about fixing it, it's understanding what actually is broken. What caused the project to break?
If you don't really understand what really caused the project to break, your efforts
to fix it are not likely to be successful. So really get into what really went wrong
here? And, if you're working with a contractor, which I understand most of you are, you are
going to have to ask some really hard questions and get people a room and have some really
candid conversation about what really went on? Where did the things really go off-track?
Now having that information you can then concoct, I shouldn't say concoct because it's not really
concocting, [laughter] you can fabricate put together, [laughter] you definitely don't
want to do that, bad choice of words [laughter], you can put together the story that you need
to communicate to your stakeholders. You can go to them and say that we have conducted
a root cause analysis. We now know these are the three things that led us astray and these
are the changes we are making in our recovery plan so that those problems do not manifest
themselves again. So, having that kind of clear chain I think is pretty important. The
more vested your stakeholders are, the more interested they are, the more likely they'll
be interested in that level of detail. Now here is the quandary with what Mike just said
and that is, that is doing a root cause analysis takes time and you don't generally have time
when you are in a high pressure thing so the first thing you need to do is you have a plan
we say it a whole lot that there is so many plans when it comes to project management.
I know for the most part we recommend to each of you that you take more of an integrated
approach. Hopefully, you are realizing the benefits of some of these plans specifically
as it relates to resetting the project baseline. I don't think that's so much of a bad thing,
I think really what's critical is the timing. And then, as my colleagues are saying as well
is the planning that you have done in advance in preparation that such a situation arises
that you need to have a plan that you need to reset your baseline. I think a couple things
that come to mind and these are the themes you are going to hear in all the questions
we are addressing; certainly monitoring. You heard about communications. So I think in
every instance we have talked about the importance of developing a communications plan and in
that plan you should be addressing the channels of communications. You should be addressing
your different stakeholder groups and how you communicate with the different stakeholder
groups, so again here in that story that I talked about, if you laid it out properly,
a lot of the steps you are going to take to support your action plan will already be in
place. You'll just have to maybe go back and do a quick assessment and maybe leverage that
us. Thank you very, very, very much.