Sometimes projects get stuck. They stratify; they stall. We cancel them if we can, but often we press on, hoping for the best. Since we can't always tell which project elements led to the problems, we often try to preserve the very elements that caused the stalls, and eventually the project ends in disappointment or even outright failure. Usually, we get something like what we wanted, but the experience is unsatisfying.
A third choice, between pressing on with a project and canceling it, is restarting. Restarting means halting, assessing what we have, reorganizing, reassigning, repartitioning responsibility, replanning, re-envisioning. It's energizing, and it can be painful.
When you restart, put everything on the table. Introduce new leadership, new team structures, new plans - even a new vision. Restarting a project creates turbulence. And that's exactly why it works. To learn why, let's take a trip to the North Atlantic.
Iceland lies in the path of the Gulf Stream. As branches of the Gulf Stream sweep past, they spin off huge eddies that warm the island. Meanwhile, the Greenland Current, as cold as the Gulf Stream is warm, creates its own eddies as it sweeps down from the North. Where the two systems collide, they create broad vortices that bring nutrients up from the ocean bottom. These nutrients support a rich marine ecology that has made the people of Iceland wealthy.
In Nature, living systems thrive on turbulence. Turbulence disrupts stratification, increasing the exchange of material between ecological subsystems. Restarting a project
creates turbulence.
And that's exactly
why it works.By providing resources to every element of an ecological system, turbulence keeps that system vital.
Restarting a project creates turbulence. Restarting is the project's Greenland Current meeting the project's Gulf Stream. A project is a candidate for a restart if:
- It has a history of repeated schedule slips or budget overruns.
- Its failure or cancellation would be a threat to the enterprise.
- There is no clear consensus about a path to success.
Three keys to successful restarts:
- Train before you try
- Learning about restarting while you're restarting is like having a driving lesson on the freeway at 5 PM on a Friday afternoon. Restart projects with care - it can be dangerous.
- Avoid blaming
- Some people who are displaced might think of themselves as being held responsible for the problem. Typically, they aren't responsible. Unblocking sometimes requires new faces to achieve turbulence. Communicate clearly that a systemic problem, not a personal one, caused the blockage.
- Get help
- If your organization has never restarted projects before, get some help for the first one or two. There's a lot to learn.
Just as the Gulf Stream and the Greenland Current stir up nutrients to support the Icelandic marine ecology, restarting a project can support the ecology of ideas that re-invigorates the project and puts it back on the path to success. Top
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Related articles
More articles on Project Management:
The Cheapest Way to Run a Project Is with Enough Resources
- Cost reduction is so common that nearly every project plan today should include budget and schedule
for several rounds of reductions. Whenever we cut costs, we risk cutting too much, so it pays to ask,
"If we do cut too much, what are the consequences?"
Dispersity Adversity
- Geographically and culturally dispersed project teams are increasingly common, as we become more travel-averse
and more bedazzled by communication technology. But people really do work better together face-to-face.
Here are some tips for managing dispersed teams.
Long-Loop Conversations: Asking Questions
- In virtual or global teams, where remote collaboration is the rule, waiting for the answer to a simple
question can take a day or more. And when the response finally arrives, it's often just another question.
Here are some suggestions for framing questions that are clear enough to get answers quickly.
More Obstacles to Finding the Reasons Why
- Retrospectives — also known as lessons learned exercises or after-action reviews — sometimes
miss important insights. Here are some additions to our growing catalog of obstacles to learning.
Seven Planning Pitfalls: III
- We usually attribute departures from plan to poor execution, or to "poor planning." But one
cause of plan ineffectiveness is the way we think when we set about devising plans. Three cognitive
biases that can play roles are the so-called Magical Number 7, the Ambiguity Effect, and the Planning Fallacy.
See also Project Management for more related articles.
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And on June 21: Asking Burning Questions
- When we suddenly realize that an important question needs answering, directly asking that question in a meeting might not be an effective way to focus the attention of the group. There are risks. Fortunately, there are also ways to manage those risks. Available here and by RSS on June 21.
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