Day 1 — Welcome to the Rescue

You arrive at the Starbucks Support Center in Seattle — a sprawling complex in the SODO district, south of downtown. The lobby smells like fresh coffee, as it always does. A barista at the in-house Reserve Bar nods as you badge through security. Eighth floor, technology wing.

The project room is on the 8th floor at the end of a corridor lined with glass-walled conference rooms. The energy is immediately wrong. Half the desks are empty — you'll learn later that Deloitte pulled 6 of their 22 consultants to other accounts during the 2-month PM gap. Post-it notes from abandoned workshops cover the walls: process flows half-drawn, requirement lists with question marks, a whiteboard that reads 'COA Mapping — NEEDS DECISION' in red marker, dated 10 weeks ago. Someone has left a copy of the Deloitte position statement on the conference table, face-up, like a warning.

Deb Hall Lefevre meets you in a small office adjacent to the project room. She's direct from the first sentence: "You have 3 weeks to present a recovery plan to the SteerCo. Rachel Ruggeri is giving this project one more chance. If the recovery plan isn't credible, she'll kill the project and write off the $8M already spent." She pauses. "The previous PM was a good project manager but a terrible politician. He tried to make everyone happy and ended up making no one happy. I need you to make hard calls and own them."

She walks you through the landscape: Finance module is the most advanced and the most broken. Deloitte is frustrated and has filed a formal position statement documenting 47 instances of 'unclear requirements.' Karen Mitchell, the VP of Supply Chain, has pulled her entire team from the project. Tom Nakamura in Finance systems has been holding things together alone. HR hasn't started — which, Deb notes drily, 'is actually the best news on this project.'

Deb hands you a folder. "Tom Nakamura's configuration audit. The previous PM's last status report. Karen's requirements document. And the Deloitte position statement. Read them all tonight. Tomorrow, find Tom — he'll tell you what's really going on. Then we'll talk about Rajiv and Deloitte."