Project and Program Turnaround

Pavelko, who has worked as an engineer, program director, and program manager at an aerospace company and led the recovery of development programs in trouble, describes how to save programs and projects in trouble, including the development of new products, systems, processes, or ways of teaching in manufacturing, nonprofit work, education, medicine, investment management, and municipal management. He details the fundamentals for executing a program turnaround, including assigning responsibility for each program task to one person, capitalizing on colocation and face-to-face communication, recruiting problem solvers, establishing team member commitments, and using team accomplishments to propel high team morale. He discusses what a development program is, what poor and successful ones look like, the typical symptoms of a program in trouble, the main causes of problems, how to reorganize and re-plan programs, how to make the transition in the program, and what fundamentals are important during execution, including teaming with the customer, selecting leaders, setting priorities and expectations, motivating innovation, encouraging continuous improvement, managing risk, emphasizing ethics, providing sub-contract management, maintaining progress tracking, establishing the use of metrics, deriving corrective action, maintaining control of product configuration, and knowing what to look for when recruiting talent. A separate chapter addresses misconceptions about and guidance for software development. Annotation ©2017 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Thomas Pavelko had a 37-year career as a project then program leader at Lockheed Martin. He led and successfully completed programs for a vast range of commercial and government customers. Pavelko led many teams that developed state of the art, first of its kind systems. Many of these actives were valued at over $1B, with over 250 direct professional reports and over 25 subcontractors and suppliers.