---
name: manage-a-project-recovery
category: start
description: Manage a project recovery through independent diagnosis, stabilized commitments, realistic options, rebaselining, stakeholder decisions, and evidence-based control. Use when a project is materially late, over budget, unsafe, low quality, or no longer credible.
---

# manage-a-project-recovery

Recovery may mean reshape or stop, not only accelerate.

## When to use

- Use when forecasts, milestones, benefits, scope, risks, or team confidence have broken down.
- Do not pressure teams to hide bad news or commit to dates without evidence.

## Procedure

1. Establish sponsor, independent recovery lead, decision authority, scope, urgency, and safe reporting.
2. Freeze unreliable promises and preserve plans, estimates, contracts, decisions, evidence, and actual performance.
3. Determine current deliverables, completion evidence, defects, spend, commitments, capacity, dependencies, risks, and benefits.
4. Identify root causes across scope, governance, estimation, capability, technology, vendor, decision, demand, and external change.
5. Build credible continue, reduce, resequence, pause, replace, and stop options with cost, time, risk, value, and transition effects.
6. Select through accountable decision and rebaseline scope, milestones, budget, staffing, controls, and acceptance.
7. Run short evidence-based checkpoints, protect team health, escalate variance early, and control new change.
8. Verify recovery outcomes and capture systemic lessons without scapegoating.

## Done

- A recovery assessment and rebaseline record current truth, causes, options, decision, scope, schedule, budget, capacity, risk, and owners
- Evidence, financial, dependency, option, authority, team-health, milestone, forecast, and benefit checks verify credible recovery