On occasion, projects may be paused or stopped indefinitely. It’s what we always say: projects are alive. Thus, things are changed frequently, decisions are taken and a project can even be ended before its scheduled date. We can also freeze them, hit pause. And this may happen for various reasons, which can be categorised as three primary causes:
— A poorly estimated budget or change. This happens rather often. Sometimes, the unexpected consumes more economic resources than expected, or outside causes end the funding. In these cases, many projects are concluded or frozen. Science research projects serve as an example, as they tend to take a break while awaiting a new cash injection.
— A lack of resources. This could be down to insufficiency in the work teams, a lack of suitable technology, etc. This may finish or paralyse the project.
— A change in project strategy. We might alter strategy based on client or market needs, a change of interest among our partners, or innovations which could improve our results. There are many strategic reasons for which we may decide that it’s not worth investing in this particular project, even where we have all the necessary resources. We don’t know if it will be interesting to continue in the future, so we paralyse or end it.
Índice
What happens when a project is paralysed or ended?
With Sinnaps, you can end your projects and pick them up again whenever you need without losing data. There are two actions:
— Eliminate a project: lose all project information.
— End a project: save the information, but time is no longer counted, automatic updates stop and the Team Members lose access to it.
The best thing is that with Sinnaps you can relaunch projects which have been ended whenever you want. And when you end a project, you’re also pausing it. You don’t know if you’ll need it later.
How to relaunch a project
At the milestones, this kind of important decision is taken on whether or not to continue a project or to change its focus. However, sometimes these decisions don’t have to be permanent. We don’t know if we might have to restart the project some months down the line.
When relaunching a project, it is important to plan it first in Testing Mode. The dates will have changed, possibly the previously assigned work team has changed projects, so new people need to be added. Equally, the resources may not be the same. Nor even the strategy.
So, when relaunching the project, a simulation is important. Prior to implementation, make your changes in Testing Mode in order to see how they affect the planning.
Once the planning is adapted to the new plan, implement it and bring the new work team on board.
Tip: carry out a simulation in Testing Mode prior to relaunching your project.
Steps to end and relaunch a project in Sinnaps
To end a project we need to go to our main board (clicking in the Sinnaps Icon). Then, in the lower area of the screen, where tht projects are listed, press the “menu” icon represented by three vertical dots on the right of the project name.
Click on End Project et voilà! Sinnaps will automatically send a notification to all the people involved.
Relaunch the project by accessing the same panel where you can find the ended projects, then click on Relaunch Project.
