The most popular troubled project remedies in the literature are 'more time', 'more people', and 'more money'. Another remedy in widespread use is the motivation of the team to work harder and even longer hours of (generally unpaid) overtime. These remedies are not particularly effective. Recent UK Government reports, focusing on the reasons why projects be come troubled, correctly stress the value of modular and incremental approaches to development and the importance of a co-operative and open relationship be tween the buyer and the vendor. These considerations point the way to an approach to the development of a successful turnaround strategy it requires buyer and vendor teams to engage in an open, honest and collaborative manner, to consider how the project can be reshaped. This often means delivering less functionality, but delivering it earlier.

Inspec keywords: project management; DP industry; human factors; team working

Other keywords: project remedies; team motivation; vendor teams; buyer teams

Subjects: Computing/DP personnel management