How a Project Gets Here
Nobody sets out to mislead a steering committee, and usually nobody does. The schedule slips a little, and the recovery plan absorbs it. The vendor reports progress against a baseline that quietly moved. Each report is assembled from the one below it, and every piece looks defensible on its own.
By the time the gap between the report and the floor is undeniable, the person best placed to say so is the person who would have to indict their own reporting to do it. That is not a character problem. It is what distance does to information.
Which is why the way out is independent. Not smarter people and not a better template. Someone with no version of events to defend.
This page is for you if: you sponsor or own a major project, the money or the outcome or both, failure would be visible outside the building, and you have started to suspect the reporting no longer describes the project.
Transition from Red to Green, Without the Drama.
Five phases, each with defined entry criteria, fixed deliverables and exit criteria that have to be met before the next one starts. You always know where the engagement is, and what ends it.
Discovery
15 business days
The defined entry point, and the only thing you commit to at the start. Evidence-based, prescriptive, and light on your team's calendar. Three checkpoints on fixed days: Day 1 the mandate is confirmed, Day 8 the emerging picture, Day 14 the executive readout. Discovery is discovery plus recommendations. It is never a re-plan.
Stabilize
Stop the slide and restore one version of the facts, so the next decision is made on something everyone recognizes.
Re-plan
Rebuild the plan from evidence, with the people who have to deliver it. A plan nobody in the room believes is not a plan.
Execute
Deliver against the reset plan under governance that keeps problems visible while they are still small enough to fix.
Sustain
Independent monitoring and an executive scorecard after the recovery, so it stays recovered. Accountability, not outsourcing.
Discovery ends at a decision that belongs to you, not to us: recover, reset or retire.
What You Get
1 / An Accurate Picture
An independent root-cause view across business, delivery, technology and vendor performance. Written in numbers and in plain language, and it names causes, not culprits.
2 / The Position
Where the project actually stands against the money committed, the time spent and the outcome promised. One version of the facts, that everybody has seen.
3 / The Decision
The recommendation, recover, reset or retire, with the reasoning in writing. Enough for you to take it to a board without us in the room.
3 / The Next Move
If recovery is the answer, what Stabilize would address first, so your following decision is already scoped before you have to make it.
What This Does for Your Position
You are going to have a conversation about this project with the people you answer to. That conversation happens whether you commission this work or not. The only thing you control is whether you walk in holding an independent account of the facts, or waiting to be told.
Executives who come out of a troubled project with their standing intact are almost never the ones whose project went well. They are the ones who saw it early, said so plainly, and brought in someone with nothing to protect. That is a decision the room remembers, and it is available to you today at a lower cost than it will be next quarter.
The finding might be uncomfortable. Having found it will not be.
Independent, Because It Has To Be
Everyone already inside the project has a version of events to protect. Not dishonestly. The project manager built the plan, the vendor set the baseline, the sponsor approved the business case, and the programme lead has been reporting green for two quarters. Each of them is defending something reasonable.
We arrive with nothing to defend. We did not write the plan, we did not sell the software, and we do not want the delivery work. That is not a personality trait, it is a commercial position, and it is the only reason our reading of your project is worth more than the one you already have.
It is also why we will recommend stopping when stopping is the right answer. Nobody expects the consultant to say it, which is exactly what makes it worth paying for.
The cheapest day to find out is today.
It has been true every day of a project.
Where We Stop
We do not aim to take over delivery.
We lead the recovery structure. Your team and your vendors deliver. We do not replace your delivery organization and our engagement leads do not staff the project, because the moment we do, our reporting is worth exactly what everyone else's is.
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We do not name culprits.
Root cause analysis identifies causes. If your real question is who to blame, an investigation is a different engagement and you want someone else to run it.
We will tell you to stop.
Retire is a formal outcome of Discovery, not a failure of it. Some projects should end, and hearing it from an independent party is considerably cheaper than hearing it from events.
We are the wrong firm if the answer is already decided.
If Discovery exists to ratify a conclusion someone reached last month, we will find that out in the first week and say so. There are cheaper ways to buy agreement.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will this disrupt a team that is already stretched?
No. Discovery is built around evidence that already exists and a small number of structured conversations. Your team keeps delivering while we work.
What if the vendor objects to a review?
We are vendor-neutral and the review examines evidence rather than intentions. In practice a capable vendor welcomes an independent baseline, because it protects them too.
Do you ever recommend stopping the project?
Yes. Retire is one of the three formal outcomes. If it were not on the table, the other two would not mean anything.
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Can you take over delivery yourselves?
We can help with this. We lead the recovery structure and your people deliver. We can also arrange for assistance for your team through trusted partners. That separation is what makes our reporting worth reading.
Where does the method come from?
The Salvage method was developed based on decades of project recovery experience across North America, China and The United Kingdom and validated against the five leading published recovery methodologies.
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What does it cost?
A fixed fee, agreed before we start. You will know the number before you commit to anything, and there is no hourly billing.
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What happens after Day 15?
Whatever you decide. Anything past Discovery is scoped separately, from the findings, and only if you ask. It ends with a decision, not a dependency.