Replanning the Project in Motion

Brad Egeland is an IT/project management consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management and project management experience leading initiatives in manufacturing, government contracting, gaming and hospitality, retail operations, aviation and airline, pharmaceutical, start-ups, healthcare, higher education, not-for-profit, high-tech, engineering and general IT.

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Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned on the projects we run--we’ve all had projects that experienced bumps in the road or redirections at some point during the engagement. If it’s minor, then you can easily redirect the project and activities, reassign things where necessary, make slight adjustments to the plan/budget and quickly move forward in the new (and right) direction.

If the problem, issue, redirection or project change is more major, then replanning is going to involve more extensive processes to make sure that you and project team have everything covered. If you find yourself in this situation, I have found that there are six key questions or actions to consider (basically as a checklist) to make sure you’ve covered all of your bases. After all, it can almost be like a mini (or major) restart on the project. You don’t want to miss some critical replanning process or task and have to deal with it later on.

Here’s my list. Ask yourself these questions: Did you…

Determine what is the cause for replanning? It’s extremely important to fully understand and document the cause for the replanning effort. When budget issues come up later on--and they will if much rework is involved--the more documentation on why you are off target (due to the replanning and project restart) and what the underlying …

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