Transcript Information Technology Project Management

Project Control
Kathy S. Schwaig
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What is Project Control?
Project control is the continuous
monitoring of the project for deviations
from plan (time, cost,or quality) and the
execution of corrective action
Project Control involves:
Finding and solving problems
Updating the plan
Tracking actual resource usage and costs
Project control requires a comprehensive
and credible (i.e., realistic and up-to-date)
plan
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Two Project Control
Approaches
Continuously and immediately correct
all deviations from plan
Periodically re-plan remainder of
project
Which is the better approach?
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Some Basic Principles of
Effective Project Control
Completion orientation
Near term commitment
Preservation of slack
Mutual accountability
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Project Control Meetings
Project Control Meetings
Frequency of meetings depends on project
duration, complexity, and uncertainty
Provides a forum for activity mangers to report
activity status information (actual start date,
along with either actual finish date, remaining
duration, or estimated finish date)
Communication is key
Problems need to be put on the table for
discussion----problems need to be identified
and diagnosed
Discussion/evaluation of courses and action
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Outcome of Project Control
Meetings
Select/commit to specific action
Analyze impact on project
quality/schedule/budget/resource plan
Revise selected course of action as
required
Reconfirm individual responsibilities (who is
going to do what)
Project manager prepares updated project
plan and report
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Measures of Activity Progress
Actual start and finish dates
Estimated remaining duration
Estimated completion date
Percent complete
Which one would you choose?
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Traffic Light Reporting
Team members are asked to estimate the
likelihood of meeting the planned target
date
One traffic light reporting scheme:
Green signifies “on target”
Yellow signifies “not on target but recoverable”
Red signifies “not on target and recoverable
only with difficulty”
Traffic light reporting highlights only the
risk of non-achievement; it is not an
attempt to estimate work done or to
quantify expected delays
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Monitoring and Controlling
Project Costs
Cost monitoring is one aspect of project
control
Not only is it important to control project costs
Costs provide an indication of the effort that
has gone into (or at least been charged to ) a
project
A project might be on schedule but only
because more money has been spent on
activities than originally budgeted
A cumulative expenditure chart provides a
simple way to compare actual vs. planned
expenditure
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Limitations of Looking at
Project Costs
By themselves, project costs tell us
little about project status
Cost charts become much more useful
if we add projected future costs
Calculated by adding the estimated costs
of uncompleted work to the costs
already incurred
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Earned Value Analysis
EVA, or budgeted cost of work performed,
has become more popular in recent years
and represents a refinement of cost
monitoring
EVA is based on assigning a value to each
task or work package based on the original
expenditure forecasts
The assigned value is the original budgeted
cost for the item and is known as the
baseline budget or budgeted cost of work
scheduled (BCWS)
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Earned Value Analysis
A task that has not yet started is assigned
the value of zero
When a task is completed, the project is
credited with the value of the task
The total value credited to the project at
any point is known as the earned value of
budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP)
BCWP can be represented as a value or as a
percentage of the budgeted cost of work
scheduled (BCWS)
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Earned Value Analysis:
Assigning Values to Tasks
Where tasks have been started but
are not yet complete, some consistent
method of assigning an earned value
must be applied
The most conservative approach is to
assign a value of zero until a task is
completed, at which point it is
assigned 100% of the budgeted value.
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