What to do if your project gets terminated?

Good day...

Picture credit: Clker-Free-Vector-Images

Have you ever been in a situation when your management considered that your project is no longer suitable to the latest strategy and thus, they decided to terminate your project? Or, when the organization decided to re-allocate the budget to something more urgent from the management's perspective? It is even worse when the decision was taken when the project is running incredibly well, when everything was on-track and your team was on-fire. Well, what would you feel in this situation? Did you get upset or disappointed?

It is very normal when you felt uncomfortable about the situation. I suppose every good project manager would feel the same. Nonetheless, it should not be the case. Let's think back. Was the situation a result of you were not managing the project well? Did you contribute to any of the decision? The answer is No, it is not your fault at all and you did not have the influence to the decision.

Now, what you should do when this happens to your project? Below are some tips I would like to share to help you go through the unanticipated situation smoothly:

1. Re-confirm the decision to your management in an official meeting. Call for a SteerCo meeting with all decision makers attend and state clearly whether the decision to terminate the project early is confirmed and final. Document the decision in a minutes of meeting and obtain the necessary sign off.

2. Upon confirmation from your management, the next thing to do is to share with your core team (and extended team when necessary, depending on the situation). You are the one who should deliver the message, do not delegate such important task to anyone in your team. Call for a team meeting and convey the message professionally (see my other post on delivering negative message). It is essential that you are not adding any emotional flavor to your message.

3. Proceed with project closure phase. The hardest thing I found in this condition is re-negotiating the terms with your vendors. You need to carefully assess and agree with your vendor on the part of the project they have delivered and your organization's obligation for paying the completed work.

4. Document all the decisions and steps carefully. In this step, it is also important to make sure that your manager is across every progress and provide her sign-off to the documents as necessary. This is necessary to make sure that your performance is not affected as you did not contribute to the termination decision.

I hope that the above tips help. Please feel free to share your comment and feedback based on your own experience.

Edwin