Project Management

Chimney Rock, NC, North Carolina, Microsoft Project Management

IT Project Turnaround Service

Your IT project is in trouble. Results do not meet expectations. Your team encountered unexpected technical hurdles. Costs are mounting. You begin to doubt whether the project will succeed. A project manager needs an uncommon skill set to successfully turn around a distressed IT project, and address its problems. The issues facing the project are usually deeply entrenched, and the project stakeholders are often resistant to change. You need a project turnaround specialist, with unique IT skills and abilities to meet the challenge.

IT Project Turnaround Specialist

Productive Technology offers a Project Turnaround specialist serving as an interim IT project manager and/or as a technical consultant. Your interim project manager will assume management responsibility for an existing project. Your turnaround interim manager has the uncommon blend of interpersonal and technical skills, and years of project management expertise to take a troubled project, and guide it to safety. Your consultant will advise project stakeholders without taking any operating role within your company. At your discretion, your project turnaround specialist will act as either an interim manager, or as a consultant, or as both.

Industry-Specific IT Expertise

Not all IT projects rely heavily on industry-specific knowledge. However, sometimes a project turnaround specialist must have expertise within a certain industry. Productive Technology's project turnaround consultant has many years of consulting expertise within the Manufacturing and Financial Services industries. Additional areas of experience include: Embedded Systems, Engineering, Pharmaceuticals, and Retail industries.

Please keep in mind that industry knowledge is not the same as project turnaround management consulting knowledge. Your skilled project turnaround specialist can revive projects with unique talents even when initially unfamiliar with your business.

Why IT Projects Fail

Listed below are some of the reasons an IT project can get into trouble:

• Project manager fails to delegate authority or train understudies
• Incorrect technical architecture
• Failure to align project goals with business objectives
• Unmanaged feature or scope creep
• Ineffective communications between project stakeholders and project team
• Project has unclear line of decision-making authority
• Inadequate project staffing resulting in higher turnover, and lower productivity and morale
• Inadequate requirements analysis

Warning Signs

Here are some possible precursors to an IT project failure:

• Project staff turnover
• Project manager has no up-to-date project plan
• Project team has difficulty answering key questions
• High rate of bugs and other quality control problems
• Failure to use appropriate technology
• Re-inventing the wheel; writing new software when a better choice is to adapt existing software
• Missed milestones and delayed deliverables
• Increase in cost estimate and resource commitment to complete the project

When to Use a Project Turnaround Specialist

Some questions to ask when considering whether to employ the services of a project turnaround specialist:

• Is a turnaround possible, realistic, and achievable for an acceptable cost?
• Are the project stakeholders willing to commit the level of time and resources the turnaround will require?
• What are your expectations for a turnaround specialist, and are they reasonable?
• What are your motivations for hiring the turnaround specialist?
• Are you willing to admit to past management mistakes?
• Will management defer decision-making to the turnaround specialist?
• Can management learn and change following the conclusion of an engagement with a turnaround specialist?
• Can management accept the possibility that the project will eventually fail, despite the best efforts of project turnaround talent?
• Does management realize one possible outcome from engaging a turnaround specialist is a recommendation to terminate the project?

Project Turnaround Consulting

Whether you need an expert advisor or need an interim IT project manager to take the reins on a struggling project, Productive Technology can help. Contact us today for more information on our capabilities, expertise, and availability.