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Is Recovery a dirty word?

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I have a serious marketing problem.  It seems Recovery for a project is a dirty word.  You see, needing to recover a project implies the project has failed.  No one really wants to admit they have failed... at least not on their project.  We, as an industry, admit that failure is rampant.  As long as we are talking about the collective set of all IT projects we can easily nod off on a 70% failure rate.  I can barely count the number of times I have seen some reference to the Standish Groups "Extreme Chaos" report.  But no one really wants to admit they or their project is in the "Challenged" or "Failed" categories. 

Now there are several reasons I choose to stick with it instead of the more politically correct Turn-Around, or adjustment, or re-base lining.  First is the idea that admitting there is a problem is the first step toward recovery (my apologies to the X anonymous programs).  If what you want is someone to help turn-around your project you haven’t yet reached the level of soul searching pain required to adopt a long lasting change.  I am an agent of change and like removing a Band-Aid I believe that the more quickly the change can be injected across the project the more likely you can face the pain associated with the change and get it behind you.

So if you’re only in trouble, get better resources.  If you’re challenged, consider some change to your approach, but if your failing and you know you are failing, call me.  Let’s do the hard stuff now, recover the project, and get the product into the hands of your users.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 28, 2007
    initially in my opinion recovery do not neccesserily should mean that the project has failed , this meaning has come from the past of projects development terminology , today it means more of course change, charting new couse , which in terms should be uderstood more like adding the options and diversifying the actions, a sort of revamping the projet. But it is not any longer a "if its getting fixed it was broken" ... as for myself and greate deal of others is sounds more like reinventing... so I totally agree with you but the premise of the articles  I dont/ time already changed to the new form and meaning.