Programme/Project Recovery
Programmes can often go off track and fail. Large scale, complex and IT enabled programmes are the most likely victims. The consequences for organisations can be disastrous – hitting cash flow and bottom line results, damaging reputation with customers and diminishing morale within the business. The problem is that most businesses either do not recognise the symptoms of failure early enough, or do not know what actions to take to recover or even salvage a failing project.
Programme Recovery is different from ‘normal’ project management. Recovery projects usually have high visibility at Board level, they get talked about widely as people like to speculate and second guess the outcomes and stress levels increase.
There will be a sense of urgency and a need to take measured short cuts and apply rapid recovery techniques if a programme is to deliver to its original or revised objectives. Experience is knowing how to get it right first time is essential.
Over many years of helping businesses to deliver complex projects, Searchlight has developed a core capability in Programme Recovery. Our recovery approach aims to:
- Identify the critical issues and rapidly build an action plan to resolve them
- Align scope and programmes phases to ensure delivery can continue in an effective manner
- Re-align the delivery organisation structure, clarifying roles and responsibilities
- Establish effective internal and external communications, to re-invigorate the team
- Minimise any exposure to customers and suppliers
- Focus the team on appropriate deliverables and creating appropriate and effective management information
- Re-align the governance structure to focus on key decision points or stage gates, to maintain delivery control, quality and costs
The very nature of a recovery relies on ‘raising the game’ and increasing the speed of resolution of key issues in what can be a very ‘defensive’ environment. However, this will necessitate highly experienced project managers who know and understand the Recovery process – you only get one chance to recover a project and retain stakeholder buy-in.
The key to ensuring delivery success is to understand the true state of delivery and to identify if action is required – then take action. Searchlight works with out clients in two ways:
- Delivery Assurance: designing delivery assurance into initiatives to avoid the need for significant turn around activities. We provide experienced programme and project managers on either a full or part time basis throughout the delivery life cycle to ensure the programme remains focused on delivering the benefits sought
- Recovery Assessment: conduct a rapid assessment using our Beacon & TaLaaSH delivery frameworks, to quickly identify actions to move the programme or bring the project back on track
ammes can often go off track and fail. Large scale, complex and IT enabled programmes are the most likely victims. The consequences for organisations can be disastrous – hitting cash flow and bottom line results, damaging reputation with customers and diminishing morale within the business. The problem is that most businesses either do not recognise the symptoms of failure early enough, or do not know what actions to take to recover or even salvage a failing project.
Programme Recovery is different from ‘normal’ project management. Recovery projects usually have high visibility at Board level, they get talked about widely as people like to speculate and second guess the outcomes, rumours abound and stress levels increase.
There will be a sense of urgency and a need to take measured short cuts and apply rapid recovery techniques if a programme is to deliver to its original or revised objectives. Experience in knowing how to get it right first time is essential.
Over many years of helping businesses to recover complex projects, Searchlight has developed a core capability in Programme Recovery. Our recovery approach aims to:
