Rescue the Problem Project: A Complete Guide to Identifying, Preventing, and Recovering from Project Failure

"Rescue the Problem Project" is an excellent book, thorough and usable for your company. What I liked most of the book was the practical applications, his methodology and key elements of his solutions, planning, people, good data and the customer. The numerous case examples provide insight and make it easy to relate to your own company's problems and adding a personal touch to Todd's solutions for your project.Todd pays excellent attention to how people at all levels of management impact the success or failure of a project. At the same time, Todd forces to rely on facts, not opinions of what may be going wrong with a project. Todd offers a sound methodology of recovering the project and the elements of what should be included in any project management plan.He addresses all aspects of auditing the project for a proper assessment and analysis to make sure the project or parts of the project are even worth fixing. Rather than move right to execution, I appreciated the negotiation section to ensure that before going forward all interested parties are focused on the right result.Although this is a "rescue" methodology, knowing how to fix the project will ensure you head off the problem before it even starts. Finally, the methodology pays homage to the customer whose happiness determines our business success.

I picked up this book out of curiosity about a year ago. My first thought was "this is probably just another PM book that I'll end up putting on a shelf." I was wrong about that! The concepts in this book helped me recover a major project that went off track. There was not a lot of time to perform and we made an assessment of the current state of the project at that time. Instead of jumping in with a MS Project plan, we re-visited the project scope, assembled a project recovery team and got to work. We used a simple excel schedule so that all project stakeholders could be informed of our progress. We made some quick wins and started regular communications with the client. While the recovery of the project was not perfect, we were able to turn the project around in 2.5 months. The concepts in this book are essential not only to the recovery process but to any part of the project management process. Nearly all of the concepts can be applied to any project. I would highly recommend that Rescue the Problem Project be a part of any PM's library!

I recently read and would like to highly recommend Todd Williams book, “Rescue the Problem Project”Todd gives great guidance and sound advice in accurately assessing and dealing with troubled projects. He is an experienced practitioner who has been involved with turning around hundreds of failing projects.Todd gives practical advice on how to audit projects, analyze data, and applicable approaches and solutions for those finding themselves with a troubled project that may be over budget, running late or out of control.Anyone who is involved with running projects needs to read his sound advice to prevent your project from getting into trouble.

I like this book. Contains useful tables and illustrative case studies as well as templates. I should have bought the hard copy instead of the electronic version.

By the time a complete outsider is asked to enter the scene to help, tension can be incredibly high. I think this book is stellar. I liked it because:1. The author emphasizes the need to ask open ended questions and listen because all stakeholders involved in a troubled project really can and in my experience have been extremely valuable sources of information.2. He emphasizes the need to remain unbiased, objective and tactful; behaviors that should be top of mind for all who serve clients.

There are some inconsistencies and a few things that I disagree with. For example, he claims that the project health status is subjective. I have seen some Standards that promote a Objective determination.I found that there is really nothing in this book that a good well-defined standard won't address.For people wiothout a strong background in PM this book might help.

I’ve been looking for a book on project recovery for a long time. While there’s no lack of titles on the topic, very few of them offer any true insight into the potential causes or offer any suggestions on course correction. This book, however, does provide plenty of both. Well done.

I would make Todd William's book a must read for any new or current project manager looking to move up the professional knowledge ladder. Not only is this book well organized for process steps and information retrieval, but it has plenty of case studies that demonstrate how he used these skills in various real situations. To me this is a workman's book on how to get it done as a true professional.

Great read for anyone in project management. Todd provides numerous specific examples and it's clear that he knows what he's talking about.