52 Tips for Resuming Paused Projects

You face a Skip to the Details:
How To Ordercritical decision. Bookings are up, costs are down. Business looks like it's improving, and prices of critical technologies have fallen. That big project you cancelled in 2002 is still a good idea, and you still want to do it. But should you start from scratch or is there a way to pick up where you left off? Tough questions.

Here are just a few of the issues:

• How much would it cost to start from scratch? How much to resume?
• How do we get the team back together now that they've scattered to the four winds?
• What do we do about the political questions? How do we win over the people who got it cancelled back in 2004?

As the manager of a resuming project, or as someone who'd like to resume a cancelled or paused project, you face problems that differ markedly from the more familiar problems of a startup project, or even a continuing project. You must master the politics of resuming a project, of course, but that isn't enough. Once you get underway you'll face problems that you'll never see in a startup or continuation.

For example, if the project was formally cancelled, many of its assets, both human and not, have scattered. Putting them back together again can be a costly endeavor, entailing risks that a startup project or a continuing project never faces.

52 Tips for Resuming Paused Projects is a tips book packed with 52 ideas that project managers and leaders of project-oriented organizations can use right now to address the special problems of resuming paused projects.

Some sample tips

Here are some sample tips.

Check for retrospective liabilities

While the project was cancelled or paused, certain expenses, such as vacation and sick time, leases and space charges, which would otherwise have been charged to the project, might have been charged to other accounts. When the project resumes, those accrued charges might suddenly appear in the new project's accounts. Gain commitments that this won't happen, but watch for it anyway.

Watch out for documentation lag

In most projects, documentation lags implementation. When you resume a project, relying on its documentation is therefore risky, because it usually doesn't reflect the state of the project at the time it was shelved. Review all documentation for consistency, completeness and correctness. Flag anything that's dubious.

Avoid while-we're-at-it syndrome

In an ongoing project, completed items tend to remain static, even when we later discover better approaches. In a resuming project, we have a greater tendency to reconsider and redesign things "while we're at it." Watch carefully for this tendency, and maintain enough discipline to make only necessary changes.

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