6 Steps to Rescue a Derailed Project Before It‘s Too Late
We‘ve all been there – that sinking feeling when you realize a project you‘re leading has gone off the rails. Despite your best intentions and planning, you‘re now facing blown deadlines, a disgruntled client, and a frustrated team rapidly losing steam.
First, take a deep breath. You‘re not alone in this very common predicament. Studies show a staggering 70% of organizations have suffered at least one project failure in the prior 12 months. And less than a third of all projects were successfully completed on time and on budget over the past year.
But how do you turn a failing project around, especially when it feels like it has already crashed and burned? While there‘s no magic wand, there are crucial steps you must take to assess the damage, realign your team, and navigate the project to completion. Here‘s your roadmap.
1. Identify the Warning Signs Early
The first step in saving a sinking project is spotting that it‘s in trouble before it‘s too late to course-correct. That requires vigilance in monitoring a few key vital signs:
🚩 Milestones are slipping with increasing frequency
🚩 Deliverables are consistently late or subpar
🚩 Team members seem unclear on objectives
🚩 Participation and energy levels are dropping
🚩 Bottlenecks are forming around certain tasks or people
🚩 Stakeholders are expressing concerns or losing confidence
Regularly assess your project against these criteria to surface issues while they‘re still manageable. It‘s easy to breeze by small problems, but they compound quickly. As the project manager, you need to maintain a hawk‘s eye view.
Use metrics and data as much as possible to spot deviations. Are cycle times lengthening? Defect rates increasing? Throughput declining? The numbers often tell the story before you hear it verbally.
"When you see your project start to wobble, don‘t wait and think it will correct itself. It won‘t. Like a guidewire, once it starts to kink, it will eventually break if you don‘t immediately work to straighten it out." – Tommer Yehuda, CTO of Proggio
2. Get the Team Radically Aligned
Once you identify your project is misaligned, you need to act swiftly to get everyone back on the same page. Call an urgent team meeting to put all the issues on the table and hash out a go-forward plan.
But first, check your emotions and ego at the door. This discussion must be candid and constructive, not an unproductive blame game. Create an environment of psychological safety where people can share openly without fear of retribution.
Revisit the project‘s intended goals and business value. Reconfirm that everyone understands the "why" behind the work. You‘d be surprised how often the rationale gets lost in the daily grind.
Next, review the requirements and scope with a fine-toothed comb. Taxonomy errors, ambiguous needs, and last-minute changes are frequent culprits of project chaos. Make sure each deliverable is clearly defined and agreed upon.
Finally, don‘t shy away from cutting bait on aspects that are no longer feasible or critical. A 2018 Pulse of the Profession survey found 43% of projects weren‘t aligned to organizational strategy. Be ruthless about eliminating anything that doesn‘t directly support key objectives.
3. Reboot Your Communication Plan
Patrick Lencioni said it best in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team:
"If we don‘t communicate well, we certainly won‘t collaborate well."
Poor communication is the Achilles‘ heel of many struggling projects. Work gets bottlenecked, balls get dropped, and resentment festers. Therefore, one of the most impactful interventions you can make is auditing and rebooting your team communication infrastructure.
First, take a hard look at your current tools and processes:
- Are you using a project management platform like Asana, Trello, or Basecamp to organize tasks and share progress? If not, implement one stat.
- Does everyone have visibility into project assets, specs, and dependencies? Establish a central hub, like a Google Drive or Dropbox, where all information can be easily accessed by the team.
- Are you meeting frequently enough to stay aligned? According to Rahul Varshneya, co-founder of software development company Arkino, standups should happen at least 2-3 times per week with the full team.
- How are team members reporting blockers and getting unstuck? Create a shared space, like a Slack channel, for surfacing problems and offering help.
The goal is to grease the wheels of collaboration and ensure everyone has the information they need when they need it. A little process goes a long way in keeping work humming along.
4. Have Candid 1-on-1 Check-ins
Team meetings are essential, but they‘re no substitute for regular 1-on-1 check-ins between the project manager and individual contributors. These more intimate conversations are vital for unearthing challenges that get glossed over in group settings.
Schedule 30-minute sessions at least twice per month with each team member. Approach them with empathy, curiosity, and a coaching mindset.
Ask open-ended questions to draw out their point of view:
- How are you feeling about the project? What concerns do you have?
- What obstacles are impeding your progress? How can I help remove them?
- Are there any sticking points with other team members we need to work out?
- What ideas do you have for improving the project or process?
Intently listening and collaborating on solutions will help get struggling individuals back on track. And you may uncover systemic issues you were blind to that need attention.
5. Play it Straight with Stakeholders
When projects go sideways, it‘s instinctual to want to downplay issues to stakeholders. Don‘t fall into this trap! Transparency is always the best policy, even when the news isn‘t ideal.
In fact, 57% of projects fail due to poor communication to stakeholders on problems and progress. Keeping clients and sponsors in the dark will only breed more frustration in the long run.
As soon as you identify an issue, inform your stakeholders and share your action plan. Present a realistic forecast of how it will impact the budget, timeline, and scope.
Be prepared to negotiate and reset expectations if needed. Clients will appreciate you proactively looping them in and demonstrating control of the situation. Err on the side of overcommunicating status until the project is running smoothly again.
6. Conduct a Fearless Post-Mortem
Once you guide your project over the finish line, the real work begins. Before moving on, you must bring the team together to deconstruct and extract lessons from the experience. Bypassing this critical step means the mistakes get repeated.
Host a two-part project post-mortem:
- Have each team member complete a written retrospective answering:
- What went well on this project?
- What didn‘t go well on this project?
- What actions could we take to improve future projects?
- Discuss the themes as a group, celebrate wins, and identify process improvements.
The key is framing the post-mortem as a blameless reflection. You want to create space for people to call out failures and ideas without feeling attacked. Focus forward on solutions, not backward on missteps.
Distill the suggestions down into an action plan of new steps to implement, tools to adopt, and pitfalls to avoid. Most importantly, make these changes stick by weaving them into your project management framework.
Embracing Failure as Opportunity
At the end of the day, even the most perfectly planned project can‘t eliminate all risk or unknowns. Change is constant, and obstacles are inevitable. What separates successful project managers is their ability to expect the unexpected and adapt accordingly.
Failure is the greatest teacher if you‘re open to the lessons. Every project that goes astray is a chance to hone your leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills. Approach challenges with a resilient attitude and you‘ll grow your PM superpowers.
And above all else, remember that you‘re only human. Cut yourself some slack when projects don‘t go according to plan. Take a breath, roll up your sleeves, and trust in your ability to right the ship no matter how far it has drifted off course.
