Recovery Project Management

Recovery Project Management – a methodology or a set of tools and guidelines for managing troubled or failing projects. One of the most detailed methods was created by Harold Kerzner and is called UATNRE (from first letters of six stages of project recovery: Understand, Audit, Tradeoffs, Negotiate, Restart and Execute). In his paper about Recovery Project Management (called „Recovery Project Management: Techniques and Tactics For Reversing Failing Projects”) Kerzner describes the importance of understanding troubled projects, he writes about the root causes of project failure and the steps that need to be taken in recovery attempt (like choosing the Recovery Project Manager).

The project recovery starts with the Understanding Phase. At this stage the Recovery Project Manager very carefully analyses the current situation and the project history. Having understood the current situation a recovery project manager can move to Audit Phase. That is the moment where project activities need to be assed against the schedule and the objectives need to verified. Moreover, the root cause analysis needs to be performed in search of both surface and hidden failure points. Each of project deliverables needs to be assigned to one of 4 categories („must have”, „nice to have”, „can wait” and „not needed”). Next step is the Tradeoff Phase, where the Recovery Project Manager together with the project team prepares the tradeoff options for the meeting with stakeholders. During the Negotiation Phase the decision on the project future (and shape) is taken together with the stakeholders. After that comes the restart phase (if stakeholders decided to continue the project) where the Recovery Project Manager communicates results of the negotiations followed by the Execution Phase in which the project scope is being stabilized and the new plan is realized.