Project Monitoring and Control
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Produce project plan
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2.
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Monitor progress against plan
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Compare actual progress with planned progress
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4.
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Identify variations from the plan
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Apply corrective action as / if necessary
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PMs role is day to day to apply minor corrections as required
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Major corrections need to be referred to superiors
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Tolerance – PMs authority to make changes or apply corrective action
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Exception report – outlines problem and options for solution, given to the project board. Includes:
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Background
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Reasons why the exception arose
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Options
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Risks
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Exception plans showing how the project needs to be amended to implement suggestions
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Amended business case
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Recommendations
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Contingency pool – set of resources controlled by PM and can be allocated by PM as needed
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Recommendations may include:
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Work harder, longer or faster
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Solve a short term problem or meet a deadline. Tired, stressed and demotivated staff. Increased costs if overtime paid
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Increase resources
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Adding more people in IT does not often increase productivity, often it decreases. Training takes time and uses current resources. Expensive.
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Replan
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Reallocate the time on tasks which took shorter than expected. Internal movement of staff at no extra cost.
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Extend the time scale
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Sensible option. Common choice, requires negotiation. Extending deadline often seen as weak management or the project being out of control. More expensive
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Reduce scope
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Deliverables removed or delayed until later. Does not reduce costs, but value to the user may be reduced
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Terminate the project
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If no other option is ok, this maybe the only sensible thing to do. Maybe politically unacceptable
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What should we monitor?
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Progress toward deliverables, products and milestones. Progress in the WBS. % complete. Resource usage. Expenditure. Scope and size of deliverables. Watch out for scope creep. Monitor quality.
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How should we monitor?
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Formal
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Lay frequency, content and format out at the beginning of the project.
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Advantage: get commitment from people in writing and establish routines
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Disadvantage: reports maybe seen as an unproductive overhead. Staff need to be convinced of the value
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Types: Written progress reports, email, progress meetings
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Informal
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Manager have an awareness of what team enduring
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Advantage: more honest and faster communication of problems
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Disadvantage: need to avoid micro managing
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How: Chats with the team individually
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AKA Checkpoint meetings
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Weekly / agile might be daily
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Report from team leader to PM will be prepared. AKA Checkpoint report
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Agenda typically
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Each team members progress against their plans
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Reasons for variances
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Expected progress – what each team member will do next
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Current problems or issues
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Possible future problems – may include risks from the risk register
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Issues log: record issues in an issues log, which will be updated as they are resolved
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Backlog list: In an agile project a backlog list of tasks completed and to be done would be updated
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Projects are sometimes grouped into programmes, where a number of projects contribute to a set of overarching objectives
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Freq
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Less frequent
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Agenda
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Less detailed. More of a business focus than a project focus
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No point in monitoring without control
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Do through the reporting cycle
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Problems reported in progress
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Apply controls to bring it back on course (Move resources from non-critical to critical)
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Review allocation of resources
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Reduce scope
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Important to understand
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The people responsible for the project have the right to change the project objectives, not the project manager
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The report to the steering committee
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Intervals and topics in report need to conform to requirements of the recipients and the importance of what is being conveyed.
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Obtain formal agreement on reporting procedures from all parties involved
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Attendees
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PM and project board members, perhaps a secretary
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Freq
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~monthly. Larger projects probably has less frequency of catch ups
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Agenda
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Similar as for team meeting
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Report
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Highlight report, supplied by PM
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Highlight report - typically includes the following information
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Details of progress against project plan
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Current milestones achieved
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Deliverables completed
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Resource usage
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Reasons for any deviations from the plan
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New issues and unresolved issues
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Changes to risks assessments
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Plans for the next period and products to be delivered
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Graphical representations of progress information
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Gantt chart
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You will need to compare the current situation with the original plan, so the details on the Gantt chart need to be baselined
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Take a snapshot of the schedule at key points
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Maybe several but an important one will be the final agreed schedule at the beginning of the project
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Cumulative resource chart
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Present usage details
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Aka S curve chart
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Data points: Expected expenditure & Actual expenditure
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Earned value analysis (EVA)
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See if we are ahead or behind time, and above or below budget
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EVA shows budget originally allocated to completed items
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When completed we can say value is earned
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