October 13, 2011 in Blog by PMforward

Does Your Project Need To Be Rescued? Three Warning Signs

One of the many issues that IT leadership or the senior management team may deal with is a project that is not delivering results.

Whether it’s missed milestones, unplanned expenses, or scope creep, a project in distress can be very costly to an organization. It not only can burn money, it can also delay the implementation of other project/product launches and negatively affect the morale of the project team.

Here are three ways that a company can tell that a project needs to be rescued:

1. Project Schedule Health is Consistently “RED”—If the project milestones are consistently being missed and it is impacting the overall progress of the project, the schedule needs to be reassessed. This could occur because key tasks were either missed or the time allotted to complete the tasks was underestimated. This could also occur because resources are over allocated and cannot complete the tasks or do not have the expertise needed to complete the tasks correctly and on time.
2. Project is Over Budget—This can be caused by unrealistic goals made for the project’s budget during the planning stage. This can also happen if there are additional costs occurring due to a lack of a complete scope definition during the planning phase.
3. Project Status is Unknown—Lack of communication to key stakeholders, project sponsors and team members is a definite indication of a project that needs intervention. Regular communication of status is critical to the success of the project. Jeopardies can be missed and risks can remain unaddressed if the project status is not being communicated reguarly.