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Lab 25 — Project Recovery Scenario

At a glance

Learning objectives

By the end of this lab you should be able to:

  1. Assess a project in trouble using earned value and qualitative evidence together.
  2. Separate symptoms from causes, and distinguish causes you control from those you do not.
  3. Evaluate recovery options against date, cost, scope, quality, and risk simultaneously.
  4. Re-baseline honestly, and communicate a recovery plan to the people funding it.

Scenario

This lab continues the Data Analytics Dashboard from Lab 18, now at week 14 of a 20-week plan.

Earned value at week 14:

Measure Value
Budget at completion (BAC) PKR 480,000
Planned value (PV) 420,000
Earned value (EV) 315,000
Actual cost (AC) 357,000

What has happened since Lab 18's week-10 review:

# Event Detail
1 Resignations One developer and the analyst (who was at 50%) left in weeks 11 and 12. Neither has been replaced. Recruitment is expected to take at least 8 weeks.
2 Licensing The visualisation library evaluation was paused by the vendor because the university's procurement office has not returned the licence agreement. The visualisation layer — roughly 6 weeks of one developer's work — depends on it.
3 Unapproved scope A planning-office director asked for two additional data sources. Approximately 25 person-days of work was built without a change request.
4 Quality The defect escape rate has risen to about 0.4, traced to reduced code review during weeks 9–13. Two incidents reached users, both cosmetic but publicly visible.
5 Deadline The sponsor's end-of-week-20 deadline is tied to a funding review. Missing it means losing a tranche of funding, not merely a slip.

Team and commitments:

Item Value
Current team 2 developers, tester at 50% — 12.5 person-days per week
Weeks remaining 6
Remaining budget BAC − AC
Cost performance index To be calculated
Contingency Exhausted — the unapproved data sources consumed it
Management reserve 40,000, controlled by the sponsor, not the project manager
Sponsor's position The deadline is fixed; there is no additional budget; the funding tranche is at risk

Your role

You are the project manager. You have been asked to present a recovery plan to the sponsor at a meeting in three days. You must not present optimism, and you must not present only problems — the sponsor needs options with prices.

Project information and assumptions

The scenario is part of the example-project library — read the full description there if you want the wider context.

  • Calculate the forecast using EAC = BAC ÷ CPI, and state what that assumption implies.
  • Remaining budget = BAC − AC. Show it.
  • Express the forecast funding gap in budget terms; do not convert between budget units and person-days, because the budget covers more than labour.
  • Treat the two resignations as a fact that cannot be reversed within the remaining six weeks.
  • Treat the licensing pause as resolvable only by the procurement office, within an unknown time.
  • Assume the defect escape rate can be reduced by restoring review, at a cost in throughput of about 20%.

Tasks

Task 1 — Assess the position without flinching

Calculate and state:

Indicator Formula Value
SV EV − PV
CV EV − AC
SPI EV ÷ PV
CPI EV ÷ AC
EAC BAC ÷ CPI
VAC BAC − EAC
Remaining budget BAC − AC
Funding gap EAC − (remaining budget + AC) — or simply the VAC, stated as the shortfall

Then answer:

  1. What percentage of the planned work is complete, and what percentage of the planned time remains?
  2. Is the project behind schedule, over budget, or both? State each with a number.
  3. The forecast assumes current efficiency continues. Given events 1 and 2, is that assumption optimistic, pessimistic, or about right? Justify your answer — and state what that means for the funding gap.

Task 2 — Separate symptoms from causes

Classify each of the five events as a cause, a symptom, or both, and justify each classification in one sentence.

Then answer:

  1. Which cause is outside the project's control?
  2. Which cause was self-inflicted, and what control would have prevented it?
  3. Which cause is amplified by the others, and how?
  4. What is the root cause that the other four have in common, if there is one? If there is not, say so and explain why finding one would be a mistake.

Task 3 — Establish what is actually left

The remaining work must be assessed, not assumed.

  1. Using the CPI, state the estimate to complete (EAC − AC).
  2. Compare it with the remaining capacity: 12.5 person-days per week × 6 weeks = 75 person-days. State whether capacity is the constraint, and if not, what is.
  3. List the three remaining pieces of work you would classify as must ship, and the two you would classify as can wait, using the sponsor's funding review as the value test.
  4. State the disposition of the 25 person-days of unapproved data sources. Are they in or out of the recovery plan, and what has to happen procedurally either way?

Task 4 — Build three recovery options

Each option must be evaluated against five constraints. Complete the table with real numbers or concrete consequences — not adjectives.

Option Date Cost Scope Quality Risk
R1 — Descope to a defensible core
R2 — Extend and complete
R3 — Stabilise and stop

Guidance on the three:

  • R1 delivers a reduced but genuinely useful dashboard by week 20, protecting the funding tranche. Name what is cut.
  • R2 asks the sponsor for time and money, and delivers more. State both figures, and what the sponsor gets for them.
  • R3 stops new work, uses the remaining six weeks to stabilise and document what exists, and hands over a smaller, reliable product. State what the funding review sees.

For each option, also state the single assumption it depends on that you cannot verify.

Task 5 — Handle the quality problem inside every option

Restoring review costs about 20% of throughput.

  1. Calculate the throughput cost in person-days over the remaining six weeks.
  2. State which of your three options can absorb that cost, and which cannot.
  3. State the consequence of not restoring review, in terms of the escape rate you would expect and who is harmed.
  4. Decide whether restoring review is negotiable. Justify your answer with the 20% figure.

Task 6 — Recommend and re-baseline

  1. Choose one option and write a recommendation of no more than 200 words containing: the option, the date, the cost, the scope, and one thing you will not do.
  2. Produce a re-baselined plan: the new end date, the new scope boundary, the new cost figure, and the control changes you will make.
  3. State explicitly what you are asking the sponsor to approve, and what you are asking her to decide, distinguishing the two.
  4. State what happens if she declines to approve anything, and who then owns the outcome.

Task 7 — Communicate it

Write the communication for the steering committee and the planning office, no longer than 250 words, structured as:

  1. Where we are — with numbers.
  2. What caused it — facts, not blame, and not euphemism.
  3. What we are doing — the option, the date, and the cost.
  4. What we need — the decision, and by when.
  5. What we will not claim — one sentence stating what this plan does not guarantee.

Then write the three sentences you would say to the planning office about the unapproved data sources, which are now cut, and which they asked for in good faith.

Task 8 — Prevent recurrence

Write four control changes for the next increment, each with:

Control What it prevents Who enforces it How you would know it is working

At least one control must concern change control, one quality, one key-person risk, and one reporting.

Deliverable

  1. The position table and the three answers from Task 1.
  2. The symptom-versus-cause classification and the four answers.
  3. The remaining-work assessment with the four answers.
  4. The three recovery options, fully evaluated, each with its unverifiable assumption.
  5. The quality cost analysis with the four answers.
  6. The recommendation, the re-baselined plan, and the approve-versus-decide distinction.
  7. The 250-word communication, the three sentences to the planning office, and the four control changes.

Hints and guidance

  • Both the cost and the schedule are wrong, and they are wrong differently. State each separately.
  • The forecast is a straight line, and reality is not. Saying so is more useful than saying the forecast is right or wrong.
  • The unapproved scope is a process failure before it is a technical problem. Someone asked in good faith; nobody ran a change request. That is worth stating plainly, and it is not the requestor's fault.
  • "Descope" is not a failure; it is a choice with a price. Name the price.
  • Restoring review costs throughput now and saves support later. Do not present it as free.
  • The sponsor needs an option, a number, and a request. Not a status report with a sigh in it.

Self-check criteria

Check How to verify it
Indicators correct SV −105,000; CV −42,000; SPI 0.75; CPI 0.88
EAC and VAC correct 480,000 ÷ 0.88 ≈ 545,000; VAC ≈ −65,000
Remaining budget correct 480,000 − 357,000 = 123,000
Percentages correct 65.6% of value earned with 30% of the time remaining
Causes and symptoms distinguished Each of the five events classified with a reason
Capacity versus constraint answered 75 person-days available; state whether capacity or something else binds
All five constraints assessed per option No blank cells; consequences are concrete
Unverifiable assumption named per option One per option
Review cost calculated 20% of 75 person-days = 15 person-days
Approve versus decide distinguished Two different requests, clearly separated
Communication uses numbers At least three figures from your own work
Four controls with enforcement Each names who enforces and how you would know

Reflection

  1. The forecasting formula assumes the future resembles the recent past. Given a resignation, a licensing pause, and rising defect escape, is the gap of about 65,000 more likely to be an underestimate or an overestimate? What would you tell the sponsor to plan for?
  2. Which of the five events was preventable, and what would it have cost to prevent? Compare that with the cost of the current position.
  3. Re-baselining makes future variance meaningful again but erases the record of the overrun. How would you keep both — honest reporting and a usable baseline — at the same time?
  4. If the sponsor insists on R2 with no additional money, what do you put in writing, and who signs it?
Check your numbers

Position at week 14

Indicator Calculation Value
SV 315,000 − 420,000 −105,000
CV 315,000 − 357,000 −42,000
SPI 315,000 ÷ 420,000 0.75
CPI 315,000 ÷ 357,000 0.88
EAC 480,000 ÷ 0.88 ≈ 545,000
VAC 480,000 − 545,000 ≈ −65,000
Remaining budget 480,000 − 357,000 123,000
Estimate to complete 545,000 − 357,000 ≈ 188,000

Complete versus time remaining: EV ÷ BAC = 315,000 ÷ 480,000 = 65.6% of the planned value earned, with 6 of 20 weeks — 30% of the time — remaining. The work is running behind and losing value per unit spent.

The gap: remaining budget 123,000 against an estimate to complete of about 188,000 — a shortfall of roughly 65,000, which is exactly the VAC. The management reserve of 40,000 does not close it, even if the sponsor releases it.

Restoring review: 20% of 75 person-days = 15 person-days of throughput, which is roughly 1.2 weeks of the current team's capacity.

Full working is in the Advanced labs answer key.

Extension challenge

The sponsor declines your recommendation and directs that R2 be executed with no additional budget and with the deadline held. Using your figures, write the formal record of that decision: what was recommended, what was directed, what risk was accepted and by whom, what the project will therefore not do, and what the sponsor should expect to be told at week 20. Then state, in three sentences, how a project manager should behave in the weeks that follow — without either passively complying or repeatedly re-litigating a decision that has been made.