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A project at your organization is in trouble. Management has reassigned the project manager on the project and has given you the job of bringing it back in line. You have analyzed the prior project manager’s project management plan, WBS, scope baseline and found that he actually did a good job. The problem was that there was an unusual amount of discovery on this particular project; it seems that management failed to address that the project had a high degree of risk and uncertainty - greater than% - risks that the prior project manager had raised on the project. When the PM raised those issues, management’s position was "well, just do the best you can". This is a $ million project which is approximately at its halfway point, but the budget expended is close to $7.0 million dollars at this point. The project is $2 million over budget and% behind schedule. Management is alarmed at the budget burn rate and is thinking of canceling the project, even though what has been accomplished so far is high quality work that has exceeded customer expectation.
This situation is not easy but unfortunately you can often found similar situations in ERP Projects.
If I would jump into a project which stuck in this situation I would do the following steps first:
- First step would be a detailed As-Is Analysis. What is the actual earned value? What is already working? Which parts are still missing? Are there dependencies from working parts to missing parts? Which of the working parts could be used independently?
- I would have a very detailed look on the scope, prioritize requirements and use-cases and invite the most important stakeholders and sponsors to a scope-workshop. Goal of this workshop would be to reduce the scope in a well-considered way.
- Uncertainty is always a sign that there could be moving targets. A moving target is hard to meet. So I would try to identify these moving targets and to change them into clear defined targets with a clear deliverable.
- Maybe (it depends on the project) it would make sense to split the project into several releases? So the team could focus only on a defined part of the scope and postpone all other stuff to following releases.
The sunk costs are never considered as part of your decision process. You have to decide where the
project stands now, whether it is beneficial to complete what has been accomplished so far, and whether
you can reach the goals of the project. This is a standard GAAP rule.
thanks for invition ,,,,,,,,,, i agree with experts answers
Because high quality work that has exceeded customer expectation, so should completed the project at any risk.
It seems there is a gold plating with over budget project,
very hard to decide because of lack of information
It needs change request and redo the Scope, time and cost management plan, it is better to estimate the cost for completion and get some management reserve if possible and finish the project. the product should not be over the customer expectation.
apologize i'm not expert on this field
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