Project Control Project Management Body

Project Control

Project Management Body of Knowledge

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has codified standard project management practices and techniques in its published Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK, 2010) for the benefit of practicing project managers around the world. The PMI has broken down the work of a project into five process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing. The Monitoring & Controlling process group gives the project manager (PM) the necessary authority for comparing the in-process results of the project against the performance measurement baselines in the Project Management Plan (PMP), which is prepared in the Planning process group. The PM is required to exercise judgment to determine the severity of any variances and to recommend corrective action or changes if necessary. The PM facilitates conflict resolution among the stakeholders or customers through one-on-one confrontations or team meetings as deemed most appropriate. The task is to determine the root cause of the problem and to take preventative or corrective actions or to recommend updates to the PMP. The PM routinely re-calculates the project costs and time schedules, manages the cost and time reserves, and requests additional funding when needed. The PM conducts periodic inspections, makes decisions to accept or reject project work, and evaluates the effectiveness of implemented corrective actions. The PM constantly attempts to identify and analyze trends in the measurement data and looks for opportunities to improve quality of output. The PM looks for newly arising risks and re-analyzes known or existing risks. The PM uses variance reports to help correct small problems before they become serious. The PM regularly reports to all stakeholders on the on-going performance of the project and of the individual team members. The PM routinely re-calculates the earned value and the estimated completion of the project. The PM controls the project by managing the triple constraint of scope, time and cost.

Scope Management

Scope management means that the PM must constantly check to be sure that the project team is completing all assigned work, and to not allow team members to randomly add functions to the scope of the project without change control approval ("scope creep" or "gold plating." ) the PM is required by professional conduct responsibilities to deliver to the customers what they asked for -- no more and no less. (PMBOK, 2010) the scope of a project is determined by the details of all the needs of the stakeholders, including all assumptions and constraints. Scope planning requires the team to "think ahead" and to ask "how will we do this?" In addition to the statement of work to be done, the most important ingredient in the Project Scope Management Plan is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS,) which details the agreed work to be done -- prepared during the Planning process group. The WBS breaks the project down into smaller, more manageable pieces called "work packages" which cannot be further subdivided, and for which cost and time estimates can be made. Bob Prieto, in his Bravo Company case study, dealt with a situation where the scope was impossible to plan in any detail before the paintball engagement began. His team organized themselves into three squads and relied on fast management decisions to take maximum advantage of each member's talents and to react to constrained resources. (Prieto, 2008)

Time Management

Managing the time allotted for completing a project depends on accurate time estimates made during the Planning process group. Time estimates should be based on the WBS and should be done by the person who will be completing the work packages. When available, historical information about other project schedules is a key to improving estimates. A PM should never just accept completion time demands from management, but should carefully analyze the requirements of the project and come up with a defensible time estimate and then reconcile the differences with all stakeholders to produce a realistic objective. During the Planning process group, the WBS work packages are assembled into a network diagram to show dependencies and to determine all activities that are on the "critical path." During the Controlling process group, the PM regularly calculates the estimated time to completion to make sure there is enough time available to finish the work. The PM controls the time factor in the project by measuring progress against checkpoints and milestones and using such techniques as schedule compression ("fast tracking" and "crashing") to get the project back on track. Ram Garg discussed time management in his case study on delivering projects over five sites and time zones. The strategy involved executing multiple parallel projects utilizing a "futuristic" team structure, where essential functions are kept in high cost countries and the rest are moved to low cost countries. Managing the different time zones (daily conference calls were always inconvenient for someone) was addressed by building expertise locally at each site and each team "handed off the project work to another time zone before going home, and took over again the next morning." (Garg, 2008)

Cost Management

The PMBOK recognizes two basic methods of cost estimating: analogous and bottoms-up. The analogous method uses actual time spent on other similar projects, whereas the bottoms-up method relies on informed time estimates for each work package all rolled up to the project estimate. As compared to the bottoms-up approach, the analogous approach is: quicker but less accurate, less costly to prepare but requires considerable PM experience, gives PM considerable authority but invites infighting on the budget without justification. The most effective tool for controlling actual cost to the project estimate is the Earned Value Technique. The calculation shows the value of the work done to date and compares it against the money spent to date.

Quality Management

According to the PMBOK, quality is the degree to which the product of the project fulfills the customer requirements. Ensuring quality on a project starts with attention to details in the Planning process. Any applicable quality standards (such as ISO) must be considered. The quality control plan must be determined during the Planning process and then carried out in the Control process. Quality control relies on inspection of the output during or after completion of the product. Most control techniques rely on plotting measurements on a chart and calculating the standard deviation from the expected result. The so-called "Sigma" can determine the degree to which the product satisfies the customer requirement (e.g. Six Sigma is when 99.9999% of the measurements fall between the two control limits.)

Risk Management