Project Triage

Periodic project triage is a recommended best practice for managing your project portfolio. Triage should be performed at least semi-annually in stable business situations, and ad-hoc triage needs to be performed under rapidly changing business conditions  (weakening revenue projections, sudden threats in the marketplace, imminent corporate transactions such as mergers, acquisitions or divestitures, for example).

A successful  triage framework provides a structure that allows your business to evaluate the health of individual projects, as well as their alignment with current business needs.
 
Effective project triage requires more than structure, however. You need experienced project leadership that blends the right skills:

• Communication and interviewing skills to gather insight from project stakeholders and find the hidden sources of project difficulties
• Conflict resolution and meeting facilitation skills to keep communication on an objective footing and to ensure that all stakeholders remain aligned with the overall business objectives
• Proven track record of successful project delivery and agility in juggling competing project demands
• Deep and broad technology expertise to define alternative solutions that might be more appropriate to meet budget and schedule constraints

The triage process places each project into one of three groups:

1. Projects going well that need no additional intervention
2. Projects that you should suspend immediately before they burn up additional resources
3. Projects that are still necessary, but need some additional intervention to ensure their success

Projects in the first group are usually adequately scoped, planned and resourced, and may be left alone to continue to a successful conclusion without assistance. However,  they may be affected by needs elsewhere in the portfolio, in order to free up strong resources to help more critical projects that have fallen into the third group.

Projects in the second group should be shut down quickly and cleanly, so that all project artifacts can be quickly accessed if the project needs to start up again when business conditions change.
Projects in the third group require skilled diagnosis and a clear tactical plan for getting them back on track to success.

Edgewater’s senior consultants have a proven framework and the required experience and expertise to perform rapid and effective project triage if you have a crisis in your project portfolio, or to mentor your team in performing regular periodic project triage.

For more information on the Edgewater approach to project triage, contact us at 800-410-4014 or email us at makewaves@edgewater.com