Project Troubleshooting and Recovery (PM83)

This course teaches realistic analysis and control techniques to help you identify the root cause of your problems, analyze the potential solutions, and select the solution that will rescue your project.

Course Outline

Regain control when you are behind schedule, over budget, under quality, and beyond the scope.

Learn how to get an out-of-control project back under control through effective project rescue techniques. This course teaches realistic analysis and control techniques to help you identify the root cause of your problems, analyze the potential solutions, and select the solution that will rescue your project. You'll learn to manage the important measures of your project's health, monitor them, and take action to keep the project on track.

As part of the project rescue exercise, you'll learn to master techniques for identifying unrealistic expectations and renegotiating commitments. You'll practice communicating effectively with stakeholders to ensure that they all understand the problems, the actions that need to be taken, and the project's progress as you regain control. Through hands-on exercises, you'll troubleshoot and recover a project during the class. In just three days, you will learn the process, work with the tools and templates, and practice the techniques that will enable you to quickly put your own project back on track. You'll leave the course with a proven recovery strategy that can be implemented on all projects, regardless of size and scope.

Students pursuing a university-recognized and/or accredited certificate in Canada or continuing education units in the US must attend at least 90% of class time, participate in class exercises and section-knowledge checks, and score at least 70% on an end-of-class, multiple-choice assessment.

This course was previously titled Troubleshooting and Recovery of Difficult Projects.

What You'll Learn

• Understand early signs of project problems
• Identify and assess project problems
• Resolve problems with budget and schedule
• Correct resource issues
• Gain control over scope creep
• Improve product quality
• Meet your commitments, or renegotiate them
• Actively mitigate project risks
• Manage project issues to closure
• Develop and manage a project recovery plan
• Manage stakeholder anxiety

Hands-On Exercises

• Identify Symptoms of Project Problems
• Analyze Project Health
• GQM Analysis
• Fishbone Diagram
• Conduct Root Cause Analysis
• Identify Ways to Correct Problems

Who Needs to Attend

• Associate Project Managers
• Project Managers
• IT Project Managers
• Project Coordinators
• Project Analysts
• Project Leaders
• Product Managers
• Program Managers

Course Outline

1. Project Problems

• The most typical project problems
• Identifying projects in danger
• Identifying projects in trouble

2. Measuring Project Health

• Identifying metrics
• Basic measures of project health
• Earned Value Analysis

3. Problem Analysis

• Understanding the problem
• Overcoming obstacles to problem identification
• Performing root cause analysis

4. Recovery Planning

• Identifying recovery options
• Selecting the right recovery method
• Creating the recovery plan

• Schedule recovery
• Budget recovery
• Resource recovery
• Scope recovery
• Quality recovery
• Re-establishing project commitments
• Renegotiating others' commitments to your project
• Supplier recovery
• Team effectiveness recovery

5. Recovery Implementation

• Implementing the recovery plan
• Effective management and leadership during recovery
• Working with the team to rebuild morale
• Managing stakeholder anxiety
• Monitoring recovery status
• Communicating problems and recovery status