When I took over a sinking project, about six months back, there used to be escalations almost every day. We used to be buried with tones of problems that we inherited. It was a 35 man-year project (yes you read it right) which was highly needed for the firm to stay in the business; but with the status it was in, it was heading quickly to trash.

I was brought into the project with a clear goal of stabilizing the project and rolling out to the concerned divisions. I had the tough task of building the team; bringing clarity to the stakeholders; emphasizing on a process and conducting short but repeated releases. We spent many long hours in the office; few sleepless nights as well (I still remember the 36 hours that we spent in the office).

Today the system is rolled out to all the divisions; it is getting used by every project; appreciated by external auditors. The cap to all of it was that today, we received an appreciation mail from someone who sent the first escalation mail. I don