Project Management Articles
4.0
Controlling
This
section is partially completed.
Purpose |
To ensure the project objectives are
met by monitoring and measuring
progress and when necessary, taking
corrective action. |
Overview |
The appropriate project controls are
selected in the initiating phase,
defined in the planning phase, and
used during the executing phase
to ensure project performance. The plans for a project’s controls are adapted
during planning to be commensurate
with the project type, size and
risk.
For this reason the control
plans include the adapted process,
techniques, and tools that the project
has agreed to use.
As the project proceeds, the responsibility
of the project team is to review
progress against the milestones
and goals defined in the integrated
project plan.
The project control activities
manage, track and provide visibility
of actual progress.
Most project controls consist
of tracking, reviewing and managing
activities. Some typical project controls are the tracking
and management of:
·
Costs and Time.
·
Issues and Decisions.
·
Changes to Scope, Schedule, or Contract.
·
Status and Communications.
·
Quality and Risk Response.
Additional templates are being developed
to control the business transition
efforts as they relate to the development
of the product and the organizations
readiness to receive the product.
The planned controls are used as the
basis for tracking and managing
the project activities, communicating
status, and if appropriate, revising
plans.
Progress is primarily determined
by comparing the scope, effort,
cost, and schedule to the plan when
selected work products are completed
or at selected milestones. When
it is determined that the project's
plans are not being met, the project
management team should determine
the best course of action. This
may include revising the integrated
project plan to reflect the actual
accomplishments and re-planning
the remaining work or taking actions
to improve the performance. |
Objectives |
·
To understand the benefits of change
and ensure coordination of the impact
to the adjusted scope, requirements,
schedule, cost, quality and risk.
·
To maintain a common understanding
and agreement of the scope, work,
schedule, resources required and
decisions made.
·
To ensure business readiness to
receive the product once the project
has completed
·
To ensure that the project has achieved
the planned quality results and
to correct significant or risky
deviations from the quality plan.
·
To ensure project commitment and
support throughout the life of the
project by maintaining regular communications
of the project performance.
·
To recognize and proactively respond
to changes in risk over the course
of the project. |
Controlling Lessons |
Common lessons learned from skipping
or poorly executing the controlling
processes are:
- As the project progressed
the project plans became less
and less useful, resulting in
increasingly vague commitments
to questions on schedule, effort,
costs, and what would be delivered.
- The project was
being run under the management
radar screens in an effort to
avoid politics, but failed because
they were unable to avoid problems/issues
with too many project running
at the same time.
- Overtime, the project
lacked management understanding,
support and commitment.
- Cost occurred from
out of nowhere, unexpected people
were charging to the project,
some people we approved to charge
to the project, didn’t. Cost and effort overruns couldn’t be
predicted.
- The project reacted
to all issues as they occurred,
with equal effort and importance.
Risks became unmanageable
- Design changes were
done on the fly, repeated, and
prone to error.
- Quality in process
and in product was random.
If extra effort could be
fit into the remaining time or
if an individual felt compelled
to ensure a quality outcome it
happened.
- Loss of project
team moral due to lack of awareness
of changes made, lack of analysis
of work impact, and sudden overtime
commitments.
|
Input to Controlling |
1.
Integrate Project Plan (IPP). the specific parts of the IPP related
to the inputs for Controlling are:
- Overall Change Management Plan. Defines how changes to the project’s
scope/requirements, costs, schedule,
quality, and risks will be coordinated
for understanding and possible
impact in all of the planned areas.
Ensures the ongoing integrity
of the project’s Integrated Project
Plan.
- Quality Management Plan. Addresses how Quality Control will monitor
the specific project results to
determine if they comply with
relevant quality standards and
identifies ways to eliminate causes
of unsatisfactory performance.
- Risk Management Plan. Addresses how Risk Response Control (mitigation
and contingencies) will respond
to changes in risk over the course
of the project.
- Communication Plan. Addresses the collecting and disseminating
of performance information. This may includes status reporting, progress
measurement and forecasting.
- Business Transition Change Management
Plan <currently
not developed>
2.
Work
Results.
Work results are the outcomes of the activities performed to accomplish
the project.
Information on work results
– which deliverables have been completed
and which have not, to what extent
quality standards are being met,
what costs have been incurred or
committed, etc. – is collected as
part of project execution and fed
into the project’s performance reporting
activities.
3.
Change Requests. Change requests (e.g. to expand
scope, modify costs or schedule
estimates, etc.) are often identified
while the work of the project is
being done in the execution phase. |
Process Flow Diagram or Tasks |
The process activities are diagramed
and then followed by brief description
of each activity. The diagram is numbered to correspond to the
“Project Management – Overview Reference”
located in the introduction of this
process guide.
The description follows the diagram
and each process step is numbered.
A title for the process step
is indicated in bold in the left-hand
column. In addition to the title, the recommended
template to document the outcomes
of the process step is indicated
in parentheses.
|
17. Collect and
Disseminate Performance Information
(Status Report) |
Performance reporting involves collecting
and disseminating performance information
in order to provide stakeholders with information about how
resources are being used to achieve
project objectives. How performance reporting is to be carried
out for the project is defined in
the projects communication plan. Once the project is underway collecting performance
information involves collecting
and analyzing information about
the project (i.e. what deliverables
are complete, how much time and
dollars have been spent, how much
change has occurred, etc). This type of information comes from work results
– what deliverables are fully and
partially complete, what costs have
been incurred or committed, etc,
and other project records such as
the schedule, change log, issue
logs, procurement and contracting
log, quality control review recommendations,
and training log.
The
collected information is disseminated
by creating a status report that
includes:
- Describing where the project now
stands
- Describing what the project team
has accomplished
- Predicting future
project status and progress
|
18. Coordinate Changes Across Project
(Change Request Form, Change Tracking Log, Training Log,
Issue Mgmt Log, Comm. Plan Log)
or optional tool see tools and techniques.
|
Coordinating
changes across or overall change
control requires:
- Maintaining the integrity of the
performance measurement baselines
–all approved changes should be
reflected in the Integrated Project
Plan, but only project scope/requirements
changes will affect the performance
measurement baselines.
- Ensuring that changes to the product
scope are reflected in the definition
of the project scope (for differences
in type of scope see the glossary
definitions).
- Coordinating changes
impact throughout the project
plans. For example, a proposed schedule change
will often affect cost, risk,
quality and staffing.
Overall Change Control ensures that
the project’s Integrated Project
Plan remains the most useful, effective
and efficient way to accomplish
the projects objectives.
The Integrated Project plan provides
the baseline against which changes
will be controlled.
Project performance information, how
the project is doing, alerts the
project team to issues that may
cause problems in the future.
And change requests in various
forms, oral or written, direct or
indirect, externally or internally
initiated, and legally mandated
or optional may occur and will need
to be managed through the Change
Management Plan which has been adapted
for the project.
These inputs and the change
management plan facilitate the projects
ability to take appropriate corrective
action when real variance occurs
and ensures the project plans are
coordinated and accurate.
Reasoning behind the corrective actions
and changes from change control
should be documented for use as
lessons learned – becoming part
of the historical database for the
performing organization. |
19. Facilitate
Change, Quality Monitoring and Risk
Response
|
Overall change control deals with
evaluating and coordinating changes
that may impact some or all of the
areas of the project.
How the changes are implemented
into the specific areas (scope,
schedule, cost, risk, etc) is facilitated
based on the management plan for
each area.
For example, did the risk
of the project require a risk management
plan that describes the project’s
risk management process, tools and
techniques?
The more complex the project
the higher the need for formal plans
which represent agreement on how
changes will be determined and implemented.
Lower complexity project
may use just the overall change
management plan and have no need
for the more rigorous processes.
The specific areas where project controls
may be applied include Scope Change
Control, Schedule Control, Cost
Control, Quality Control, and Risk
Response Control. The following are brief descriptions of these
specific controls. |
Scope Change Control
(Requirements Traceability Matrix)
or optional tool see tools and techniques. |
Scope Change Control – controlling
changes to the project and product
scope.
The
WBS, project performance, scope
or requirement management plan and
change requests help to determine
if a change is beneficial, has occurred,
or should occur. Changes that typically effect scope are:
- An external event (e.g. a change in a government regulation).
- An error or omission in defining the scope of the
product (e.g. failure to include
a required feature in the design
of a system).
- An error in defining the scope of the project (e.g.
failure to include work to install
new Local Area Network (LAN) lines)
- A value-adding change (e.g. the project is able to
reduce cost by taking advantage
of technology that was not available
when the scope was originally
defined).
The
Requirements Management Plan should
address how a scope change would
be facilitated through all levels
of scope (e.g. business need, project
objectives, high level requirement
down to test cases and implementation
requirements).
Scope changes are fed back
through the planning process, technical
and planning documents are updated
as needed, and stakeholders
are notified as appropriate.
Reasoning behind the corrective
actions and changes from scope change
control should be documented for
use as lessons learned. |
Schedule Control
|
Schedule Control – controlling changes
to the project schedule.
The procedures by which the project
schedule may be changed will be
developed in a future process release. |
Cost Control
(Contract and Procurement Tracking Spreadsheet, Budget
Tracking Spreadsheets) |
Cost Control - Controlling changes
to the project budget.
Cost
control includes:
- Monitoring cost performance to detect variances from
plan.
- Ensuring that all appropriate changes are recorded
accurately in the cost baseline.
- Preventing incorrect, inappropriate, or unauthorized
changes from being included in
the cost baseline.
- Informing appropriate stakeholders of authorized changes.
The
procedures by which the project
cost baseline may be changed will
be developed in a future process
release. |
Quality Control
(Quality Standard checklists) |
Quality Control – monitoring specific project results to determine
if they comply with relevant quality
standards and identifying way to
eliminate causes of unsatisfactory
performance.
Project results include both product
results such as deliverables and
management results such as cost
and schedule performance.
Inputs to Quality Control include
work results, a quality management
plan, operation definitions, and
checklists.
Quality control reviews are
conducted according to the plan.
This does not means that
the specific result or deliverable
that is to be reviewed is always
planned.
For example, if reviews are
scheduled for testing, the specific
test cases to be reviewed are not
known – they are a random sampling.
Staff on the project may
conduct some types of quality control
reviews.
Staff outside the project
best conducts other reviews.
The quality control reviews
include analyzing the results and
making recommendations if necessary
for improvements. The quality management planning process determines
the amount of reviews, and who will
perform them as is appropriate for
the type, size and risk of the project.
The typical output from conducting
quality control reviews includes,
quality improvements, acceptance
decisions, rework, completed quality
control checklists, and process
adjustments. |
Risk Response Control
(Risk Mgmt Log) |
Risk Response Control – responding
to changes in risk over the course
of the project.
This involves executing the risk management
plans in order to respond to risk
events over the course of the project.
The risk management plan
indicates the type of risk response
that has been agreed to in the event
that the risk or risk trigger occurs.
Some of the identified risks
events will occur, others will not. The ones that do are actual risk events, and
the project management team must
recognize that one has occurred
so that the response developed can
be implemented.
The planned
risk responses generally are a mitigation
(lessoning of the impact) or contingency
(implementing another prepared plan
if the risk occurs).
However, some risk responses
are unplanned workarounds.
Workarounds are unplanned
responses to negative risk events. They are only considered an unplanned workaround,
in the sense that the response was
not defined in advance of the risk
event occurring.
As anticipated risk events occur or
fail to occur, and as actual risk
event effects are evaluated the
risk management plan and risk log
should be updated. |
Business Transition Controls |
<insert
in here the control process for
business transition efforts within
a project once those processes have
been defined and are made available.> |
Output From Controlling |
1.
Integrated Project Plan updates.
2.
Corrective Action.
Approved scope/requirements
changes, schedule updates, revised
cost estimates, budget updates,
estimate at completion, quality
improvements, quality acceptance
decisions, rework, completed quality
checklists, process adjustments,
risk response, and updates to plans.
3.
Lessons Learned.
Causes of variances that
required a corrective action to
the scope, budget, schedule, risk,
quality plan, rework – effectively
any part of the Integrated Project
Plan. Lessons learned filed with the PMO. |
Tools and Techniques |
Change Management
Application – some project have
created or reused an access database
change management application.
Configuration
Management Application – depends
on technology, I.e. Merant’s PVCS
Pro.
Requirements
Management Application – Rational’s
Requisite Pro.
MS
Projects – Scheduling and Tracking
Tool. |
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