The project is underway! Your team has been selected and you have identified the resources you need. Now you just have to manage it all! This is a process of watching what is happening and taking steps to keep the project on track.
Outcomes for this Learning Pack
After completing this Learning Pack you will be able to:
- Continually monitor all aspects of a project
- Review the progress of a project using milestones, deliverables, objectives and specifications to assess performance
- Apply methods for controlling project activities to maintain progress
- Consult and negotiate with team and stakeholders throughout the project
- Assess and implement proposed changes in projects which may involve changes in work plans, agreements and expectations
- Use agreed communication, documentation and reporting mechanisms
Q: Where might you find basic information that can be used to monitor and control a project, and how might that information be applied to a system?
A: Systems for monitoring and controlling the project are established early and can be found in such things as the project plan, communications plan and contracts (for outsourced work and materials). Information in the project plan applied to monitoring and control would include the network diagram and the schedule that is derived from it, which can decide points at which outcomes should be checked or reports made. The communication plan may describe an itinerary for meetings and other ways that reporting is to occur, as well as what templates and forms are needed for reports to gather project data. Contracts will also have described deliverables for the project and a range of deadlines for work.
Activity 2: Task and team management
Q: Good delegation is done in three basic steps. Which of the items below is not one of them, and why not?
A: Draw their attention to any mistakes, offer criticism and suggest corrective actions because drawing attention to mistakes may have its place, but does not indicate the sort of trust needed to delegate well. Project work itself is essentially a delegated responsibility, so trust is very important. A focus on mistakes also risks creating a culture of blame, rather than having a focus on learning. Team members should be secure in the knowledge that if they draw attention to problems they will not be criticised.
Activity 3: Change control procedures
Scenario:
You’re in charge of a simple project to develop an asset database for your organisation. You were allocated one staff member to work on the project for two days per week over six weeks. Three weeks into the project, you are informed that this staff member has been allocated as an emergency replacement in a support team going with the General Manager, Peter Doyle, to a South Pacific conference. The team will be away for approximately one week.
A: There are several alternatives possible. You could request:
- a new team member for the project, or
- a delay in the delivery date, or
- a reduced number of features in the final product.
Activity 4: Preparing project reports
Who should receive a status report? How long should a status report be? what information should be included in a status report?
- The main audience is the client and those working directly on the project. Other stakeholders are the secondary audience.
- A status report should be now more than one page, and should include charts and headings to make reading easier.
- Information should include progress against milestones, budget information, changes, quality guidelines and issues (both technical and project issues)
Q1: What are the four most important aspects to focus on when monitoring and controlling a project?
- cost
- time (the schedule)
- performance levels (quality)
- changes (controlling, directing, correcting, etc).
A2: There are many ways of effectively gathering information. The answers are :
- Plan to monitor progress of all tasks in the project
- Collect regular feedback (both formally and informally) from individual team members on their work
- Get team members to provide you with written reports
- Observe progress first hand
- Hold regular meetings to discuss progress
- Communicate regularly using tools such as email
- Document the processes the team is using to record progress
- Use planned indicators.
- Use a variety of tools to analyse data collected and provide graphical reports
A3: Metrics are sample measurements of values, such as staff levels, percentage of tests that have passed, estimated versus actual duration between major milestones, or the number of tasks planned and completed. The word ‘metric’ simply refers to the particular measurement being used, and any useful value in a project can be used.
Q4: What is the impact of schedule slippage on a project?
A4: The schedule closely interacts with deliverables, costs, task relationships, time, workloads, and scope and therefore any slippage can affect any or all of them. For example, a four-day delay on a task on the critical path can have a major impact because a milestone further along the path may not be changeable.
Q5: What are the five general ways or methods of controlling a project?
A5: Control tools and methods can include:
- rescheduling where required
- adapting resources where necessary
- delegating tasks
- changing priorities
- changing objectives where necessary
Q6: Internal changes in project development are often those that arise due to:
A6: misinterpretation of requirements, errors of principle or fact, estimation errors, invalid logic and technical issues that could not have been foreseen in planning are all causes for internal changes that arise in project development.
Q7: Control of change involves three key steps—what are they?
- Request for change
- Evaluation of the change request
- Decision and acceptance.
A8: Progress reports are used for collecting project data, updating the critical path, changing the schedule and informing stakeholders of project status.
Q9: What are the three main kinds of regular project reports?
A9: The three main types of regular project reports are:
- Status reports
- Progress reports
- Forecasts
A10: A status report
Q11: Using templates that have already been created, tried and tested for project management forms and checklists, is useful because:
A11: Using templates and checklists already created, tried and tested for project management is useful because most of the fact-finding and reporting needed in project work has remarkable similarities from one project to another; they can help avoid overlooking obvious items when designing a form yourself and it good to start by standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before you (even if they are your own shoulders! Remember to keep templates and forms you create and use for later projects).
2: Plan a simple IT project
Planning for a simple IT project occurs in the first two phases of the project life cycle. The first or ‘initiate’ phase involves activities to define the scope of the project. Once project scope is defined, the ‘plan’ phase includes developing a detailed task list, estimating task times and costs, arranging a sequence for tasks and bringing together that information in a schedule.
The two phases end in the creation of a project plan, as the means to move from planning to execution, and which is used to control and measure performance during the life of the project.
Outcomes for this unit is you will be able to:
- outline activities that occur in the ‘initiate’ and ‘plan’ phase of a project
- prepare a scope statement for a simple project
- break down a project into discrete tasks
- outline a variety of methods for estimating task duration
- distinguish between duration and elapsed time
- outline methods for estimating costs
- arrange tasks into an appropriate sequence (schedule)
- prepare a project plan for a simple project.
You may recall that a good manager needs to have skills in planning, organising, controlling, leading, and communicating. In preparing a scoping document the most significant skills are organising, communicating and planning.
In preparing your scope statement you carry out the following activities:
- Arrange meetings with sponsors and stakeholders
- Determine project requirements to meet project objectives
- Define project goals and objectives
- Determine constraints
- Determine assumptions
- Prepare initial estimates for budget, people, time frames
- Prepare task and deliverables list
Activity 2: Estimate task time
In the reading, you were given a formula for calculating task completion time, based on the best time (B), the worst time (W) and the most likely time (L). Here’s the formula again:
Use this formula to do the following activity and complete the table.
Q: You have three tasks that need a completion time to be estimated. They are not well known activities so you want to calculate a time that will take into account variations.
Use the weighted average formula to fill in the last column values
A: The weighted averages completion times are as follows:
Table of weighted averages—completion times
Activity 3: The main planning tasks
Q: Describe the five main tasks that you have to complete in the planning phase of the project life cycle and the two general management skills you might need.
A: Did you remember the following?
- develop detailed task list
- estimate all task times and all costs
- arrange best sequence of all tasks
- develop workable schedule and identify critical milestones
- write detailed project plan and obtain approval from stakeholders.
The general management skills of planning and communication would be needed—to meet with many people and elicit information to correctly estimate work durations, costs and resources, etc.
