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:
Team Thrills
- Occasionally we have the experience of belonging to a great team. Thrilling as it is, the experience
is rare. How can we make it happen more often?
Films Not About Project Teams: II
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about project teams. Most are available to borrow from the public library, and all are great fun.
The Injured Teammate: II
- You're a team lead, and one of the team members is suddenly very ill or has been severely injured. How
do you handle it? Here are some suggestions for breaking the news to the team.
Depth First or Breadth First?
- When investigating candidate solutions to a problem, we tend to focus first on what we believe is the
"best bet." But a more systematic approach can sometimes yield dramatic advantages by reducing
the cost of the investigation and the time it requires.
On Managing Life Event Risk
- Life events are those significant personal occurrences that lie outside the context of work. Some life
events cause enough stress and demand enough attention that they affect our performance at work. When
they do, they can affect our employers' plans.
See also Project Management and Project Management for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
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And on May 21: Mismanaging Project Managers
- Most organizations hold project managers accountable for project performance. But they don't grant those project managers control of needed resources. Nor do they hold project sponsors or other senior managers accountable for the consequences of their actions when they interfere with project work. Here's a catalog of behaviors worth looking at. Available here and by RSS on May 21.
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