inheriting a red project

First, find out what's not working. That's almost what you said in your fourth point, but it needs to be made clear. WHY is the project red? WHAT has/hasn't happened to put it there? WHO was responsible for that delay? WHO was accountable for it?

Until you know the problem, you cannot find a solution. The corollary to "If it's not broke, don't fix it" is "If you don't know what's broke, you can't fix it."

I once inherited a very, very red project. I found that the previous manager was not delegating tasks to the teams. His morning ritual was like, "OK, guys. Go do XXX." Never did he break up the groups into work units. Never did he assign specific accountabilities. Never did he follow-up to check on the crews while they were working.

Once I realized the problem was that no one was actually being told to do any specific tasks, my job was easy. "Team A, do X; Andy is in charge. Report back to me at the end of the day to give me a status update. Team B, do Y. Bobby is in charge. Report back to me at the end of the day to give me a status update..." and so on. I then made it a point to visit the various work sites at least once per day, while still doing my primary job, which wasn't even supposed to be project management. It ended up being I was the de facto project manager, but it was never official.

We finished on time, at least in "project time." We were behind the date originally assigned, but ahead of the curve compared to everyone else's completion date.

 Hi Kevin,

I would hasten to add (from personnel experience) that you should focus on the critical few not the trivial many.  Time, cost, scope and people.

 To add to Pegman's point - be brutally honest on forcing hard choices on priorities and business value ala 'the big rocks first'.  If you are inheriting a steaming pile its likely that no matter what you do something is not going to get delivered on time - so make sure that the misses things are the least important things.  Its also important to make sure you are on the same page as far as quality expectations - many times quality goes out the window in an attempt to turn things around which in my experience just makes things worse.

Thanks,

George

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 To add to Pegman's point - be brutally honest on forcing hard choices on priorities and business value ala 'the big rocks first'.  If you are inheriting a steaming pile its likely that no matter what you do something is not going to get delivered on time - so make sure that the misses things are the least important things.  Its also important to make sure you are on the same page as far as quality expectations - many times quality goes out the window in an attempt to turn things around which in my experience just makes things worse.

Thanks,

George

DiSC 7511