Monitoring And Controlling the Project

The following are the important themes that you must remember from the PMI Perspective with respect to the Monitoring & Controlling Phase of the Project.

1. Project changes should be expected, planned for, and well managed.
2. Out-of-scope work (gold-plating) adds no value to the project and should be avoided.
3. Scope verification ensures that the work product is formally accepted. Quality assurance ensures the correctness of the work product.
4. Lessons learned are important resources for planning and future projects. Maintaining the lessons learned during project control is important.
5. All change-control systems should include guidance on the following factors;
o How to influence the factors that cause change
o How to detect when a change has occurred
o How to obtain agreement on a change activity
o How to manage the change
6. Earned value is the preferred project controlling and performance reporting technique.
7. Cost variance (CV) = earned value – actual costs (EV – AC)
8. Cost Performance Index (CPI) = earned value / actual costs (EV / AC)
9. Schedule variance (SV) = earned value – planned value (EV – PV)
10. Schedule Performance Index (SPI) = earned value / planned value (EV / PV)
11. Estimate at completion (EAC) = budget at completion (BAC) / CPI
12. Estimate to complete (ETC) = EAC - actual costs (AC)
13. Variances are always “earned value” minus something. Performance indexes are always “earned value” divided by something.
14. Performance indexes of less than 1 are unfavorable. Nearer the index is to ‘1’ the better.
15. Practically speaking maintaining the SPI or CPI at exactly ‘1’ is very difficult. Most practical managers expect to maintain it around 0.95 to 1.05
16. Quality control focuses on measurement. Quality assurance focuses on all the planned and systematic quality activities within the project.
17. The key quality control tools and techniques are control charts, pareto analysis (80/20 rule), Ishikawa diagrams (cause and effect, fishbone), trend analysis, and statistical sampling.
18. Preventing a risk event is always preferred to mitigating a risk event.
19. A key goal of effective risk management is to have a response plan ready (that is, a mitigation strategy) to be implemented if the risk event occurs.
20. Risk management may require re-planning, developing alternate strategies, and re-baselining the project, depending on the severity of the new risk that was identified.

Exam Trivia:

Gold Plating or Value Addition is something that large IT company’s expect its employees to do as a mandatory activity during project work. But, from PMI’s perspective Gold Plating is prohibited and project managers and team members are not supposed to do stuff that is not part of the Project Scope. Though you might be asked to do so by your management and you may do it as part of your work, you must not select that as a choice in the exam.

Other PMI Themes:

General PMI Themes
Project Framework
Project Initiation
Project Planning
Project Execution
Project Closure
Ethics & Professional Responsibility

Important Terms and Definitions - Monitoring & Controlling Project Work

As usual, let us wrap up the section on Monitoring & Controlling the Project Work by looking at the important terms and definitions we learnt as part of this section.

• Change control board - A formal group of stakeholders with the authority to process change requests, which includes reviewing, approving, rejecting, and delaying change requests.
• Change request - A request for deviating from the project plan or related policies or procedures, such as modifying scope, schedule, or cost. Change requests may include recommendations for corrective and preventive actions.
• Claim - An assertion, demand, or request made by a buyer against the seller or vice versa for consideration or compensation under the terms of a legal contract.
• Control - To analyze the performance and make and implement recommendations for corrective actions or other changes to bring the project back on track.
• Corrective actions - Actions recommended for execution in the future in order to bring project performance back in line with the project management plan.
• Monitor - To collect project performance information/data as planned, convert the information to performance measurements, and report the performance.
• Preventive actions - Actions to be executed to keep the project from getting off track—for example, to avoid risks or poor performance.
• Project performance - Measure of actual project progress against planned progress.

Prev: Summary - Monitoring & Controlling Project Work

Next: Introduction to Monitoring and Controlling Quality & Risk

Summary - Monitoring & Controlling Project Work

We have successfully completed the section on Monitoring & Controlling the Project Work. Let us summarize what we learnt about Monitoring & Controlling the Project Work.

• You need to monitor and control your project throughout its lifecycle, which includes monitoring and controlling project work, including procurements, performance, changes, quality, and risks.
• All these aspects of the project are monitored and controlled by using two high-level processes that belong to integration management:

o Monitor and Control Project Work and
o Perform Integrated Change Control.

• This also includes administering the procurement part of the project, which is another high-level process.
• The Monitor and Control Project Work process takes performance reports as input, compares them to the planned performance (baselines) in the project management plan, and, if needed, makes recommendations for changes to bring the project back on track.
• The change requests from this and other processes are run through the Perform Integrated Change Control process.
• Only the change requests approved through this process are implemented.
• Project procurements are administered by using many processes, including

o Perform Quality Control
o Report Performance
o Direct and Manage Project Execution
o Monitor and Control Risks and
o Perform Integrated Change Control.

Prev: Administering Procurements

Next: Important Terms & Definitions - Monitoring & Controlling Project Work

Chapter 73: Big Picture of Monitoring and Controlling the Project

You monitor and control your project by monitoring and controlling the project performance, changes, and risks. Monitoring includes measuring project performance, collecting information about project performance, and evaluating performance information to see the trends. Continuous monitoring helps the project management team identify the areas that need to be controlled closely by, for example, taking corrective or preventive actions.

Trivia:
Monitoring and controlling does not start only after the project starts execution. Rather, the project needs to be monitored and controlled all the way from initiation through closing. Just for the sake of following the PMI Specification on process grouping, the Monitoring & Controlling Process Group is separate but monitoring happens throughout the life of the project.

A project is monitored and controlled using the Monitor and Control Project Work and Perform Integrated Change Control processes, which are high-level processes performed by executing more specific processes, such as cost control, schedule control, and scope control. All these processes are in the monitoring and controlling process group except the Directing & Managing Project Execution process, which belongs to the executing group

The picture below explains the process group

As illustrated in the picture above, work performance information generated by the Direct and Manage Project Execution process is used by most of the monitoring and controlling processes. The Control Scope, Control Schedule, and Control Cost processes analyze this information to generate work performance measurements, which are used by some other processes, such as Perform Quality Control and Report Performance. The Report Performance process generates performance reports, which are used by the Monitor and Control Risks and Administer Procurements processes. One obvious output of most of these processes is the change requests, including recommended corrective and preventive actions, which go through the Perform Integrated Change Control process for approval. If approved, the execution of these actions and changes is managed using Direct and Manage Project Execution, a process in the executing process group.

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Next: Monitoring & Controlling the Project

Chapter 6: The Project Lifecycle

In the previous chapter, we learnt what a process is and the fact that, they are used widely in the project management lifecycle. In this chapter, we are going to understand the project lifecycle.

So, lets get started!!!

Project Lifecycle:

From initiation/authorization to completion/closure, a project goes through a whole lifecycle that includes defining the project objectives, planning the work to achieve those objectives, performing the actual work, monitoring and controlling the progress, and closing the project after receiving the product acceptance or after cancellation of the project.
The below picture depicts the relation between the various stages in a projects lifecycle. Each of these stages is a process group and there are a variety of processes involved in each of these stages.

Let us now take a detailed look at these stages, one by one:

Initiating a Project:

This stage defines and authorizes the project. The project manager is named, and the project is officially launched through a signed document called the project charter, which contains items such as the purpose of the project, a high-level product description, a summary of the milestone schedule, and a business case for the project. Another outcome of this stage is a document called the stakeholder register, which identifies the project stakeholders and important information about them. The processes used to perform this stage fall into a group called the initiating process group.

Trivia:
The term high-level means lacking details or not including the details. This term will be used frequently and its good to know what it means. A high level activity would usually involved a detailed activity usually worked out through a process called progressive elaboration which we covered a couple of chapters back.

Planning a Project:

In this stage, you as the project manager, along with the project management team, refine the project objectives and requirements and develop the project management plan, which is a collection of several plans that constitute a course of actions required to achieve the objectives and meet the requirements of the project. The project scope is finalized with the project scope statement. The project management plan, the outcome of this stage, contains subsidiary plans, such as a project scope management plan, a schedule management plan, and a quality management plan. The processes used to perform this stage fall into a group called the planning process group.

Executing a Project:

In this stage, you as the project manager, implement the project management plan, and the project team performs the work scheduled in the planning stage. You coordinate all the activities being performed to achieve the project objectives and meet the project requirements. Of course, the main output of any project is the project deliverables. Approved changes, recommendations, and defect repairs are also implemented in this stage. But where do these changes and recommendations come from? They arise from monitoring and controlling the project. The stakeholders can also suggest changes, which must go through an approval process before implementation. The project execution is performed using the processes that fall into a group called the executing process group.

Monitoring and controlling:

You monitor and control the project through its lifecycle, including the execution stage. Monitoring and controlling includes defending the project against scope creep (unapproved changes to the project scope), monitoring the project progress and performance to identify variance from the plan, and recommending preventive and corrective actions to bring the project in line with the planned expectations in the approved project management plan. Requests for changes, such as change to the project scope, are also included in this stage; they can come from you or from any other project stakeholder. The changes must go through an approval process, and only the approved changes are implemented. The processes used in this stage fall into a group called the monitoring and controlling process group.

Closing a Project:

In this stage, you manage the formal acceptance of the project product, close any contracts involved, and bring the project to an end by disbanding the project team. Closing the project includes conducting a project review for lessons learned and possibly turning over the outcome of the project to another group, such as the maintenance or operations group.
This stage is applicable even for Terminated/Cancelled Projects. Terminated projects (that is, projects cancelled before completion) should also go through the closing stage. The processes used to perform the closing stage fall into the group called the closing process group.
Don’t forget the last, but not the least, task of the closing stage: Project Closure Party!!!

Trivia:
What we refer to as project stages here are not actually the project phases. A project phase is part of the whole project in which certain milestones or project deliverables are completed. All these stages, technically called process groups, can be applied to any phase of a project that is divided into multiple phases.

Project Lifecycle Summary:

Let us wrap up this chapter, by summarizing the project lifecycle and the activities involved in it.

Process Group	Project Stage	Goal	Outcome
Initiating	Starting the project	Authorize the project	Project charter
Planning	Organizing and preparing	Plan and schedule the work to perform the project	Project management plan
Executing	Carrying out the work	Perform the project work	Project deliverables: product, service, results
Monitoring and controlling	Spans the project lifecycle	Monitor the progress of the project to identify the variance from the plan and to correct it	Change requests and recommendations for preventive and corrective actions
Closing	Closing the project formally	Close the project	Product acceptance, contract closure, and archiving

The initiating stage authorizes a project by naming the project manager, the planning stage further defines the project objectives and plans the work to meet those objectives, the execution stage executes the work, the monitoring and controlling stage monitors the progress of the project and controls it to keep it in line with the plan, and the closing stage formally closes the project by obtaining the product acceptance. Each of these stages is performed by using a group of processes. Thereby, these stages are called process groups.

The stages of a project or process groups determine when a process is executed, whereas the processes themselves belong to certain knowledge areas of project management. In the next chapter, we will be looking at the project management knowledge areas.

Previous: Understanding a Process

Next: Project Management Knowledge Areas