Remember the “Billion Dollar Government Boondoggle”? In the late 1990s, the Canadian government contracted out the immense task to create a national electronic firearms registry. The project was going to cost $119 million, $117 million of which was to be offset by registration fees and licenses. $1 billion later… The project ran into virtually every problem that it possibly could, from politics, to 1000 change orders in the first two years, to figuring out how to get it to integrate with computer systems in 50 different agencies. Poorly defined from the start, this project only got worse, more expensive, and more absurd. When faced with their own ‘Titanics’, when do organizations and agencies say, “Enough is enough?” and simply abandon ship?

Sometimes the weight of a project makes it a burden rather than a benefit. Here are 6 situations when this happens:

• The Project No Longer Meets The Strategic Objectives of The Company. The business case lays out exactly why this project is necessary, what it needs, and what it’s going to return the cost, and the benefits. When a project no longer meets the business case, it is in danger. If it will cost, for example, $5 million more to complete, and that is not going to be recaptured within a reasonable amount of time, the project is of no value to the end-user.
• It No Longer Meets The Enterprise’s Established ROI and Strategic Benefit Criteria. Compared with other projects in the corporate portfolio, this one does not provide enough benefit to justify its continuation. Additional costs may make the ROI too low, especially compared with other projects which potentially return much more value.
• It Has Lost Active Support or Endorsement. When the champions responsible for selecting and funding projects stop actively supporting it, this is a death knell. Oftentimes, it is political. People can be fired for implementation of troubled projects. They failed to report the troubled project status because it was easier for them to cut their losses rather than explain to the board a project overrun of $10 million more than anticipated and/or took six months longer.
• Needs Have Changed and The Project Is No Longer Appropriate. If a project is a multi-year, multi-phase initiative, it can often be the case that it’s obsolete before its completion. After the initial infrastructure you realize that the reason you were doing this no longer exists. Technology has changed; your business strategy has changed or your processes changed… whatever it is, you no longer have the itch that was to be scratched with this project.
• It Does Not Have The Requisite Resources. The enterprise does not have the people, technology, money, or knowledge to support the project and its changes on an ongoing basis. This happened with the registry system; the project was consuming $55 million per year in maintenance costs alone, and this was unsustainable. Again, companies would rather cut their losses than continue pouring money into a leaky project.
• The Complexity of The Project Exceeds The Corporate Ability To Complete It. This happens a lot with “build vs. buy” decisions. A client, for instance, may want to build a product, but five manufacturers – with the requisite technology, equipment, knowledge, and people – make the same product off the shelf. In this case, it is too complex to build. Instead you could potentially buy and customize for less.

Project recovery is possible – but it is worth it? A recovery consultant could help you assess the situation to avoid future depletion of resources, time, and morale that could be spent on more promising projects.