What "slipping" usually means
By the time outside help is called in, the pattern is familiar. The programme has a plan, a governance structure and a status report, and none of the three reflects reality. The date has moved once, quietly. Individual workstreams are each confident their part is fine. The supplier is raising change requests. And an experienced person on the team could tell you exactly what is wrong, but has not been asked in a forum where saying it would be welcome.
The first two weeks: establish what is true
Recovery starts with an honest picture, which cannot be obtained from the status report. It comes from talking to the people doing the work, individually, without their managers, with an explicit undertaking that nobody gets blamed for what they say. The recurring findings are consistent across sectors:
- Ownership is diffuse. Several people are responsible for the outcome, which means nobody is.
- Decisions are outstanding. There is usually a short list of unmade decisions (often three or four) blocking a great deal of work.
- The plan is a task list. It shows activity rather than dependency, so it cannot tell you what happens if one thing moves.
- Reporting is optimistic by design. Nobody is lying. Everyone is rounding in the same direction, and it compounds.
- Scope has grown. Rarely through one big decision. Usually through twenty small reasonable ones.
The reset
The output of diagnosis is a small number of uncomfortable recommendations, put to the sponsor in private before they are put to a board. Typically: what is genuinely deliverable by when, what must be descoped or deferred, which decisions need making this month, who owns the outcome from here, and what it will cost to finish.
This is the point at which recovery either works or does not. A recovery that produces a revised plan the sponsor does not truly believe in has achieved nothing except a new date to miss.
Then: grip
The remainder is unglamorous and largely about rhythm:
- A short, frequent, decision-focused meeting that starts and ends on time.
- Reporting that shows the critical path and the risks, not a wall of green.
- Active management of the supplier's commercial position, including change control.
- Decisions taken at the pace the plan requires, escalated the moment they slip.
- Blockers removed personally rather than logged.
What it is not
It is not a review that produces a report and leaves. It is not a restructure of the team. And it is not, in most cases, a technical intervention. Programmes that are slipping usually have competent people doing sound work inside a structure that will not let them finish.
When to call for help
Earlier than most businesses do. The strongest signal is not the first slipped date; it is the second, particularly when the reasons given are different from the first. A short independent review at that point costs a fraction of a recovery six months later, and occasionally concludes that the programme is fine, which is a perfectly good outcome to pay for.