How to Save a Failing Project: Chaos to Control

Poor project results are all too common and result in dissatisfied customers, users, and project staff. With countless people, goals, objectives, expectations, budgets, schedules, deliverables, and deadlines to consider, it can be difficult to keep projects in focus and on track. How to Save a Failing Project: Chaos to Control arms project managers with the tools and techniques needed to address these project challenges. The authors provide guidance to develop a project plan, establish a schedule for execution, identify project tracking mechanisms, and implement turnaround methods to avoid failure and regain control.

About the Authors

Ralph Young, DBA, has focused his career on managing and improving technical efforts, projects, and organizations. He has led projects and teams in different venues, including local and federal government, management information systems, systems and software engineering, process improvement, systems integration, and organizational change management. He has authored four books that address aspects of requirements engineering: Effective Requirements Practices (which explains what to do on a project and in an organization); The Requirements Engineering Handbook (which addresses how to perform requirements engineering); Project Requirements: A Guide to Best Practices (which recommends a set of best practices and explains why project managers should invest in the requirements process); and, with Paul J. Solomon, PMP, Performance-Based Earned Value (which proposes changing industry practices regarding the use of earned value techniques on a project to a performance-based approach). Dr. Young believes that leadership and effective requirements development and management are key factors in achieving successful project outcomes. He holds a BA in economics from the University of New Hampshire and an MA in economics and a DBA from The George Washington University.

Steve Brady, MBA, PMP, is a senior project manager with more than 14 years of project management experience. His professional experience includes some 20 years in the information technology industry, providing project management, organizational process development, and strategic planning. As a project manager, Mr. Brady has led both custom software development and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product implementations. He is versed in every area of the development life cycle and has led projects for federal, state, and local governments. Throughout his career, Mr. Brady has developed and executed organizational processes in a number of firms, including Motorola, Northrop Grumman, and TASC Inc. He specializes in executing projects using mature processes and has five years of experience leading a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 5 project, the Software Engineering Institute’s highest maturity level. He holds a BS in management of information systems and an MBA from Wright State University.

Dennis Nagle, Jr., has spent more than 20 years as an engineer on many project teams, both as a programmer and also the principal software architect. Based on this experience, he brings the developer’s or performer’s point of view to the project management process. Mr. Nagle is certified in the Personal Software Process (PSP) as defined by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a Northrop Grumman Achievement Award for his significant contribution toward his business unit’s receiving a Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI) Level 5 rating. Mr. Nagle believes that managing stakeholder expectations and creating accurate estimates based on historical data are crucial for successful projects. He holds a BS in computer science from Virginia Tech and an MS in computer science from Wright State University.