Project Recovery

Scopes creep, budgets start seeming small, deadlines start to shift – it’s happened to almost every consultant.  Our team has experience with not only coming in and helping create new expectations (leading to a rebuilt client relationship), but also helping your team review their risk management and expectation control methods to reduce problem incidence.

Reset Expectations

The process of restoring customer confidence requires carefully setting new, incremental expectations - and meeting them. Typically, when a project has reached a point requiring recovery, the source of the troubles can be traced all the way back to project inception. Whether the client had expectations that weren’t shared or were not carefully captured and agreed to, either will make it nearly impossible to complete the project satisfactorily.

In order to get back on track, our process includes reviewing the expectations from bothsides of the table match those up to what ever had been agreed to in writing, and negotiate what can be completed as part of the original budget or should be handled as an additional estimate. Once agreement has been reached, it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get things done.

Complete the Mission

No amount of revised project plans or renewal of faith can save a relationship if milestones and deadlines start to slip again. Our careful management of (and possibly services for) the project will keep progress going. This includes having many agreed to milestones, deliverable details, and executive sign-off at key stages.

Small Square Services will be cost-conscious during all these efforts, but a completed project is far better than any litigation costs. A customer who is very satisfied by the end of this process is also very likely to continue to be a customer.

Project Forensics and Retraining

Once the client side of the project is complete, it is vital to ensure recovery will not be needed again to invest in post-project work.

Firstly, we need to do some internal forensics on what business processes were insuffcient to stop the problem to begin with. Much of this will have been discovered during the Reset Expectations phase, but here we fill in all the final gaps for the executive team.

Secondly, it is key to rebuild the client and project management processes used and retrain the staff in the new operations. Each hour spent on this critical stage is likely going to save dozens of hours in what would be project recovery the next time around.