The PMI Project Management Fact Book, Second Edition

Plot

Annotation - A crisis behaves like a project. It has a beginning, middle, and an end; and you must resolve it with limited resources. During a crisis, the "vital organs" of the business must continue to function. You do not have the luxury of suspending operations while a solution is found. It's like flying a plane rather than driving a car--when the engine blows, you can't pull over, open the hood, and act befuddled. You have to fix the problem while attempting to land safely.- Triage your problems. Look over the corporate battlefield, and fix those problems with the best chance of survival. Don't treat the most difficult problems--they're DOA. Don't waste time on the easy problems either--they can survive on their own. With this approach, a large number of simultaneous problems become manageable.- Protect all critical points. Critical points are those work components that are highly important and have a high impact if failure should occur--their loss makes a big difference in crisis recovery. The most common critical points in business are your best people, who are by and large overworked and overstressed. Look around in your organization--the best people are always in a crisis-management mode, on the firing lines. In the meantime, the losers lead a life of relative ease. Work hard to divert crisis-impacts away from your best performers.