Thursday, November 13, 2014

Monitoring and Controlling process

The Monitoring and Controlling process oversees all the tasks and metrics necessary to ensure that the approved and authorized project is within scope, on time, and on budget so that the project proceeds with minimal risk. This process involves comparing actual performance with planned performance and taking corrective action to yield the desired outcome when significant differences exist. Monitoring and Controlling process is continuously performed throughout the life of the project. 
The primary results of the Monitoring and Controlling processes are the project performance reports and implementing project changes. The focus for project management is the analysis of project performance to determine whether a change is needed in the plan for the remaining project activities to achieve the project goals.



Project Communication Tools and Techniques
Earned Value Analysis
Pulse Meetings
Pulse meetings are short team status meetings where the project management team is able to gather project performance information about the activities that are underway. These meetings should occur frequently and can either be face-to-face or virtual. Normally they are only a few minutes in duration. During the meeting, the beginning and completion of project activities is reported. In addition, the status of any activities that are underway is communicated to the rest of the project management team. Issues on any of the ongoing activities are identified; however, the issue resolution occurs at a separate meeting with the appropriate individuals present. The issue resolution meeting may immediately follow the Pulse meeting, but it is clearly a separate meeting and those project team members who are not needed for issue resolution do not need to attend.

Variance Reports
Variance reports are formal reports generated by the PMIS, by the Earned Value Management System, one of the other business management systems - such as the quality control system, or by a project supplier. Variance reports compare what has actually happened on a project against what was expected to have happened on the project. The variances can uncover both positive and negative project risk.


Program Reviews
Program Reviews are meetings with the project team members and sub-project leaders that review the current status of the program as compared to the original program plan. The question being asked is whether the program activities and the sub-projects are likely to interfere with each other.

Technical Reviews
Technical Reviews are formal meetings conducted with subject matter experts who are not members of the project team. These are in-depth reviews focused upon a technical aspect of the project. Examples would be Design Reviews, Code Reviews, Security Reviews, or Production Readiness Reviews. The reviewers should perform an in-depth analysis of the project deliverables and activities to determine whether the project work has been accomplished completely and correctly. These reviews will normally generate a list of actions that must be completed. These actions may require additional testing or analysis. In some cases it may even require redesigns of systems, software, processes or products. The results of these reviews are normally reported to senior management at the next Management Review.

Control Procurements
This process is part of the Project Procurement Management knowledge area. It involves managing contracts and monitoring performance of subcontracted work. Key outputs of this process are work performance information and change requests. Inspections and audits are typically performed in this process.

Control Communications
This process is part of the Project Communications Management knowledge area. It involves making sure the communications needs of stakeholders are met throughout the project. Therefore, outputs such as work performance information and change requests are part of this process. And, as expected, meetings are critical to this process.

Project Forecasting
Project Forecasting consists of taking the project status information and extrapolating the current project performance to the end of the project. Forecasts can be made with respect to project duration, overall project cost, performance/quality level of project deliverables, or any combination of these. A key element in forecasting is to review the risk events that occurred and the remaining risk triggers.
When forecasting project duration, the key is to understand the schedule performance and schedule risk of the activities on the critical path. Those activities will be the ones that drive the project completion date. On a resource constrained project, or a project with unpredictable resource availability, this can be very difficult because the lack of resources causes the critical path to vary.

Project Dashboards
Dashboards have proliferated as more organizations start to manage projects within the context of a portfolio of projects. A dashboard is a great method for capturing a snapshot of a project and presenting that to stakeholders. Dashboards contain a small subset of project status information that is used as indicators of whether the entire project is on track. The dashboard information is used to make decisions concerning changes to projects or to the project portfolio.
Change Management Log
 Change Management Log This tool is very straight-forward. The need for it increases as the project complexity increases. The necessity on a Complex project is because these projects are managed as a set of focused and full-scale sub-projects. The boundaries between these sub-projects will inevitably need to change as projects progress. Sometimes the changes are due to shifting milestones. Sometimes the changes are the result of activity deliverables that are passed between the projects. In any case, the changes in one sub-project cascades into changes in another sub-project. The Change Management Log tracks the implementation of the change across the sub-projects. It can also track the implementation of the change within a project, especially if the project activities are conducted in multiple locations or if there are multiple phases underway at one time. Using the Change Management Log is similar to using an action item list. Each item is tracked to ensure it has been completed.


References:
IS 445/645-Introduction to Project Management Slides




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