Not every project can be a success, but losing a project is always costly in terms of both time and resources. While sometimes the best thing you can do is pull the plug, it’s not something that you should do without putting up a fight first.
If you see a project failing, rather than c level contact list immediately calling it quits, think about what you can do to save it, first. Of course, there are many reasons why projects fail—but there are also many ways to salvage them, too. Here, we’ll present 5 tips on steps you can take to rescue a floundering project and make it valuable for your organization.
1. Frame it as a problem
There is no way to sugarcoat it: a failing project is a problem. The first step is coming to terms with that fact. The second step is to diagnose what kind of problem you are facing. This is what cognitive psychologists call problem framing.
By definition a problem is a situation where you have A) a starting state (where your project is right now), B) a finished state (the recovery cost reduction best practice of the project), C) a set of obstacles that prevent a change of states (the condition that puts you in your current situation), and D) a set of possible behaviors that help you overcome those obstacles.
A problem is considered well structured when you have defined in clear terms the 4 elements mentioned above. On the other hand, if at least one of the elements is missing what you have is an unstructured problem.
2. Restructure Your Team
Sometimes a team’s skill set just doesn’t align with the nature of a project, even when that same team might have successfully met its goals in the past. Maybe their methodology isn’t turning out the expected results. Maybe they lack the technical skills. Or maybe they don’t have the right leadership for the current project.
Whatever the case may be, restructuring mobile lead a team is a solution, but one that can’t be taken lightly. While restructuring doesn’t necessarily mean firing (regardless of the bad rep the word gets) it does entail a change in the team’s dynamic, one that can cause more harm than good.
Restructuring can mean anything—bringing fresh blood to the project, reshuffling the workload, a change of leadership, or even downsizing. How do you go about restructuring your team?