Executive's Guide to Project Management: Organizational Processes and Practices for Supporting Complex Projects

Project Death Process

There are three ways that the project can move through the death process. It can be postponed, canceled, or completed.

Project Postponed

An active project is postponed if its staff resources have been temporarily removed. Such projects must return to the pool of prioritized projects and be selected and its staff resources restored. The resources allocated to a postponed project are returned to the staffing category from which they originated to be reallocated to the next project in the queue of that project category.

Postponed Indefinitely

The problem situation or business opportunity is no longer what it was when the project was first proposed. Unless that situation changes, the project will die a slow death due to neglect.

Paused

A project can be paused for some number of cycles due to a temporary condition and then resumed when the condition is no longer in play. These conditions include:

• Higher priority projects require team resources for a few cycles for completion.
• There is a temporary loss of resources to the portfolio.

Project Canceled

An active project is canceled if it has failed to demonstrate planned progress toward its successful completion. Depending on the stage in which the project was canceled, there may be unspent resources. If so, they are returned to the resource pool from which they originated. Those resources then become available for the next project in the prioritized queue of projects being held pending funding for that portfolio. ...