How to revive a project?

Good day...

In my last posting, I discussed what to do when your project gets early terminated due to your management decision. I'm sure you must also have faced the situation when you were requested to re-commence a project as they now get back to alignment with strategy, or, an extra budget has now been obtained by your organization.

Picture credit: MartyNZ

Now, I would like to share some tips on this case also:

1. Similar with the case when you are about to early terminate a project, you need to re-confirm to your management on the new direction to the project. There are situations when a project is to be re-commenced with a different direction due to recent change in the organization's strategy. Let's be clear on the new direction and make sure that you are leading the project towards the direction.

2. In addition, you also need to re-confirm on the additional budget. The amount might no longer the same as the initial budget you had put in the project plan. Once the budget is confirmed, you might need to adjust your project plan to align with the available budget. Any change you make to the project plan should be well documented and signed-off by the authorized management representative (could be your project sponsor, or even a board of management).

3. The next step is then for you to call your team and deliver the exciting message. In most cases the original team is no longer available as they might be engaged with other projects. In this case you need to re-negotiate for resources with your PMO or the respective department heads. I would strongly recommend that you do another kick-off and assume that it is a new project with a new project team (although some of the team members are the same).

4. Then you will need to re-negotiate with your vendors on the term to continue the remaining work. As on step 3 it is recommended to assume the project is a newly started one, in many cases it is better to completely re-scope the project and issue a new work order to your vendor.

In short, once confirmation is obtained that the project is to be re-commenced, let's assume that it is a new project with re-defined scope, budget, and the entire set of project planning.

Edwin