Break big projects into collections of small ones, and correct course after each project finishes. Dear Bob …A suggestion for Advice Line readers:On long projects, at least twice a year, management should set aside a few days to re-ask themselves the same three fundamental questions they presumably asked when they started the project: 1. What is it that we were originally trying to accomplish? (the infamous alligator/swamp question).2. Is the way we’re going about it still the best/quickest/cheapest way to accomplish it? and …3. Is accomplishing this still worth the priority and resources we’re allocating to it? What do you think?– Project GovernancerDear Governancer … As you probably know, I’d dispense with the six-month inspection because I’m in favor of making sure no project ever has a longer timeline than six months (or a team size bigger than maybe 10).Maybe I’m quibbling, because in order to keep each project that small, you have to break big efforts down into multi-project initiatives.This creates a more natural situation than six month continue/kill reviews. Instead, as initiatives progress, the completion of each project creates a “gate.” In these gates (or for that matter if a company does work with big monolithic projects and adds six-month reviews) there’s another question to ask. It’s probably more important than the go/no-go questions you provided:4. Do we need to make any course corrections?It’s rare that the business situation will have changed so radically that a large projects makes no sense at all. It’s at least as rare that the situation will remain so static, and the planners have had so much foresight, that the original conception will still fit the business situation without any adjustments. – Bob Technology Industry