The clinic is a mixture of formal lectures, informal discussions and work sessions. During the clinic, the clinician will identify project problems with the team members. He or she will demonstrate how to solve the problems, and how to avoid creating new ones. The clinician will answer questions from the team members, and explain the best ways for the project to proceed. The clinic is a hands-on workshop using material from the real project.
Clinics normally run from one to three days in length.
After the clinic, the consultant will send the project manager a summary of what has taken place, and identify any remedial actions to be taken. There are two situations that benefit from a project clinic. When you suspect that something is wrong and you want identify the problem before any serious damage is done. And when you are about to start a new activity and want to take a checkpoint on the projects' health before progressing. Attendees at a project clinic are those people directly involved with the project.