Recovery starts with the delivery condition
A programme can lose control during mobilisation, supplier alignment, implementation or transition. The timing varies, but the pattern is consistent: activity continues while decisions, dependencies and accountability stop converging on an outcome.
A revised schedule is not a recovery
The first task is not to produce a new plan. It is to establish which assumptions are false, which decisions are missing, where ownership has broken down and what work genuinely controls the outcome. The plan becomes credible only after those conditions are corrected.
Control must remain after the intervention
Successful intervention is visible when the existing team can explain the outcome, make the required decisions and control delivery without a permanent layer of external direction. Recovery should increase capability as well as confidence.