Taking Over a Train Wreck

 

The team is awesome.  They are smart, motivated, and want to do a great job.

The last project manager?  FAIL

You're the new project manager, and you're speaking to variances on a baseline that forgot what reality was last fall.  The WBS is structured to look nice, not to model the actual breakdown of work on the project.  The schedule was made to be convenient for upper management, not to be a representation of the actual work that has to get done.

Arrrrgh!

How To Cope

The first thing is to get a handle on your scope.  Without that, trying to manipulate a schedule is futile.  The WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) to the rescue!

Scared at what the reaction of the developers will be, you decide to sit down with them and create a WBS together anyway.  Oddly enough, a little while later you have a draft that looks pretty darn good, actually.  The team is already getting used to the idea that they can glance at this diagram to get a clear sense of what they need to deliver.

Now that your structure for work breakdown is solid, you can start breaking down the deliverables into the tasks it will take to produce them.  I do this in a BOE (Basis of Estimate).¹  Then, you can start to produce a schedule (at least a working schedule) that really tries to model reality.

Depending on the project environment you are in, you may be able to re-baseline the project right away or you may have to wait.  You may have to speak to variances for a long time however.

• Be honest - If you think the previous estimates were plain wrong, say so.  "Now that we know more information about x, y, and z our estimates are closer to reality (and well done in the BOE too).
• Find out what you can - In this situation it's helpful if you can find out what assumptions were made before you arrived.  In some cases there will be no documentation and you may have to guess.
• Be good to the team - I have seen some people in this situation try to blame the team for an unrealistic set of estimates, decomposition of the work, etc.  Nope.  Everyone contributes, but this is ultimately the PM's responsibility.
• Wow them with the "new way" - I don't normally recommend changing anything within the first 30-60 days of taking over a team....unless it's a train wreck.  In this case, your goal should be to wow both the project team and the other stakeholders external to the direct team with turning a fuzzy mess into crystal clarity.

What advice do you have for others in this situation?  Have you been in this situation yourself?

-Josh

¹ WBS Coach, WBS and BOE integration on page 50 of the textbook