You’ve Just Inherited Someone Else’s Project¹: Now What?

The majority of projects – even ultimately successful ones – run into significant problems during their development. While organizations have a variety of mechanisms at their disposal to correct projects that are experiencing difficulties, one of the most radical is replacing the project manager. Replacing a project manager “mid-stream” involves a major change to an ongoing project with the potential benefits of onboarding an individual with a different perspective or set of managerial and/or technical skills. When a project manager is replaced it often sends the message that it is necessary to correct practice on troubled projects. It is also used to communicate to decision makers and team members the need for change and that processes and trust in governance needs to be re-established. This chapter discusses the decisions involved when replacing a project manager and the critical steps that the new project manager frequently undertakes in order to take control, assuage key stakeholders, and begin a series of remedial steps designed to bring the project back on track.