If your Project is not performing very well what will you do?

when you are “out of control,” you must first understand what “in control” means. Obvious or not, that’s a difficult question to answer, and it may not be all that relevant.

The point is not to measure the project, the people, or the management against some yardstick. Rather, it is to recognize when the team has slipped from a state of healthy, natural chaos to a point where progress is hindered by a lack of control.

As Microsoft’s Chris Peters noted, “The default state of a project is out of control.” The natural tendency is toward unhealthy chaos. Only the management of the team, with the help of the team itself, can provide the control necessary to make the project a success. This makes it difficult if you are vigilantly watching for some transition from “in control” to “out of control,” because some teams are never in control in the first place.

This document focuses on recognizing the unhealthy signs of a project that needs corrective action. It’s much more a listing of symptoms than a cookbook for project management, and much less a how-to than a diagnostic tool.

If PM observed the project is not performing per baseline, i.e a variance is observed during analyzing the project performance data, PM should implement one of the following responses:

Take corrective actions - Preferred option is to understand the root cause of the variance and then implement action plan to get the variance corrected. When measuring the project performance frequently, it is more likely that action can be taken that will make a difference. Examples of corrective actions can be adding resources, changing the process, coaching team members, compressing the schedule (fast-tracking, crashing), or reducing scope (this would be documented as a change request too).

Ignore it — In cases where the variance is small and falls within an acceptable threshold range, PM may choose to take no action to resolve the deviation. Even in these cases, it is recommended to log the variance as a risk (though the risk may be of lower impact).

Cancel project — In some cases the response may be to cancel the project altogether. This response is more likely on projects where one or more key assumptions realized to be wrong or when one or more of the critical success factors has a very low tolerance for any deviations.

Reset baselines — While taking corrective action is the preferred option for performance variances, there are times when the variance cannot be eliminated. In such cases, PM need to to reset the performance baselines and seek approval from sponsor and stakeholders (through a Changement management process). Then from this point on, performance is measured from this revised baseline.

Hope this answers your question.

The best solution is to meet with project sponsor/owner and report to him everything for the project status and why does it behave away from its planned status. Then the steering commuttee or the PMO will decide to focus in this project by terminating it, merge it with another project, or reshape it by deploying a better rosources for it.

Review the Project Management Plan and make suitable amendments wherever required to improve project performance.

Please note that as per PMBOK, Project Management Plan is iterative in nature and this gives the authority to the Project Manager to review and amend the same to improve the project performances.

The improvements may be required in Stakeholder, Scope, Time, Cost, Risk, Communication, Resources, Quality Management Plans. 

Identify the root cause and take action swiftly

analyse & find the reason of delay or cost over run revise your plan if it is within permissible limits get approval from the stakeholders for the update plan  , if  not then report to the stakeholders the actual project status and it they will be   effected with the continiutity of the project under new plan , so that they can decidie the fate of the project  

Results chain analysis workshop with Most Significant Change analysis in every six months is essential to find out the gaps.

  not performing very well  means two

first is not performing well in cost (actual cost more than planned cost)

second is not per.well in sched.(actual time is more than planned time)

Hi

I wouldnt despair , i' d  put in additional time into finding   Problem areas  in d project  & focus on rectifying d probs @ d earliest.  I' d like to b more specific but my device is  making typing a nightmare after d sotware update

First, I will try to replan since replannin is common technique in project Mgt cycle

Second, I have to make sure that I have the needed support for the project from the projetc sponsor

Third, If the quality is not an important key I may squeeze the time and cost by reducing the quality.

Fourth, I have to put the justification of all aspects lead to such situation.

When you are in out of control then I believe that you miss one stakeholder who was not involved from the begining or you you have resources conflict.