1. War-room approach

When the urgency or criticality of the situation requires, a war room (or project Management Office) is essential.  This area should be used by the key stakeholders to drive the action program with a shared ownership of the outcomes. Some key aspects of a successful war room approach:

• Visible - high profile and preferably in a central location
• Appropriate measures & deliverables
• Timely - actions and benefits tracking.  It is action-oriented and brief updates should be daily
• Owned - clarity around who will do what action by when
• Pro-active - visual updates of what has happened and is about to happen described as visually as possible (e.g. layout diagrams, photographs of before and after, concerns actioned and outstanding)

2. Short & medium-term actions

Whilst the Project Management office should look the part (as described above) it is simply as a means-to-an-end.  It is not a place for drawn-out meetings but for agreeing actions, monitoring progress and working together to solve off-line problems – pro-active and dynamic!

All of this is captured simply in Milestone and Activity plans - at a suitable granularity (i.e. can sensibly be updated daily and span a period of a few weeks)

3. Phased handover & mentoring as required...

Our objective in all projects is to work ourselves out of the job as quickly as possible and to manage a rapid hand-over to confident, competent individuals of a robust ongoing situation.

Part of this is about ensuring the local team are fully up-to-speed with the competencies that apply, and where there are any gaps, then working together to close these; quickly, efficiently and cost effectively - using internal and local service providers where appropriate.