Category: Management

Module Overview

Our first two weeks offer a recap of project management life cycles and how monitoring, controlling, and project close are incorporated within each. Monitoring and Controlling is continuous through any project and starts at the onset of the project and continues until the project is finished. In this week you will also be introduced to some of the pitfalls and challenges that Project Managers are faced with related to project control. Lastly, you will request access to Planview ProjectPlace, which is a software tool we will use during the course.

Module Objectives:

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Students will understand how Project Control fits into predictive and adaptive project approaches.

Learning Materials:

Study the following learning materials this week:

Introduction to Project Management

For those of you who are new to project management or have not yet taken a project management course, please take a moment to read the article below where the author discusses what a project is. This will offer you foundational knowledge related to these concepts.

Project Life Cycle Approaches

As you learn more about project management and work with different organizational leaders who run projects, you may find different project life cycle adaptations, each of which may have unique characteristics based on the type of projects being implemented. This adaptation may also change the approach for project planning; although all aspects of planning should be present during all types of projects to help maximize the likelihood of a successful project.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) offers standardization and tools that Project Management Professionals use for all aspects of a project. For a life cycle, PMI offers three different approaches:

• Predictive Approach. This approach, often called waterfall, is used when the project requirements can be clearly defined, collected, and analyzed at the start of the project. This project type requires the highest level of planning to build out all the required steps to execute the project.
• Adaptive Approach. This approach, often referred to Agile, is useful when requirements are subject to uncertainty and volatility and may change throughout the project. This type of approach starts with a clear vision of what to accomplish, but requirements may be refined, changed, or replaced in accordance to feedback or events, which occur during the project.
• Hybrid Approach. This approach combines both the predictive and adaptive methods, including some elements from both into the life cycle of the project. This is often used when deliverables for the project can be established, offering a predictive development approach, but the means of getting to those deliverables completed may need to be done in a

a commonly used framework used for predictive approaches to lead successful projects is provided by the Project Management Institute (PMI), which comprises of five Project Management Process Groups:

1. Initiate
2. Planning
3. Execute
4. Monitoring and Controlling
5. Project Close

Initiation or Conceptualization is where we develop the initial goal and specifications for the project, including the resources and stakeholders. Planning is where we go into detailed specifications, schedules, and plans are created. Execution is where the actual work is performed, the system is developed, or product is created. Closure or Termination is when the end result is transferred to the customer, resources reassigned, and the project is closed out. Review the below image as a reminder of the life cycle.

Monitoring & Controlling Overview

Notice the graphic to the right reminds us that a fourth components of all projects lives across all phases: Monitoring & Control. During this continuous process we continue checking that the project team is delivering on the set objectives and within the triple constraints; as noted in the next graphic. The triple constraints tells us that each component of the project (A. scope or identified work to be completed; B. time; and C. cost) must work in balance with the other two, or the triangle will break. For example, I cannot add scope (expand that triangle line) without either adding more costs (or resources) or time to the project. If I try and add scope without impacting costs/time, then my triangle will break. A broken triangle will mean that the quality of the project is being sacrificed.

Monitoring and controlling a project further involves tracking, reviewing, and regulating progress to ensure that it is aligning to the objectives of the plan. This includes comparing actual project performance against planned, assessing to make sure the project is headed in the right direction, evaluating if risks could cause the project to become unsuccessful, updating plans, and communicating reports to applicable stakeholders. You can think of project control essentially is a repetition of four steps that a project manager continually monitors throughout the project.

1. Set a goal (scope, budget, time line, etc)
2. Measure progress (continue review to see how we are progressing)
3. Compare actual with planned
4. Take action and start the process again (it is continuous until the project closes)

As part of the control process we use numerous tools to confirm we are staying within the boundaries of the project; some of which you will learn about in subsequent weeks! Take time as well to search out other literature or YouTube videos to help you further understand project control.

Project Control with Adaptive Projects

Project Control is critical in all project formats, regardless if the project is predictive, adaptive, or hybrid. There will always be some degree of goal set and work to be accomplished. Furthermore, adaptive projects work toward a completion goal with unknown scope, which may in turn cause numerous iterations or changes; project control helps keep this in check with ensuring the changes keep aligned to the overall goals of the project and the expectations of the stakeholders.

Project Measurement Pitfalls

There are numerous pitfalls or challenges that Project Managers may be faced with when they are monitoring a project. A Project Manager relies heavily on the trust and relationships with their project team members; each which will have responsibilities to report back to the Manager. Some things to watch out for include:

• Unreliable Data being provided for reporting purposes.
• More optimistic data being offered than reality (often because a team member does not want to present that they are further behind than they are).
• Estimates are not realistic
• Early project indicators may not yield the same trajectory
• Focus on outputs instead of outcomes
• Misalignment of quality expectations between the team and the customer
• Inadequate or lack of accountability within the team

Project Closing Overview

Every project eventually will come to and end, thus ideally delivering on the scope of the project. During project completion, the project will be accepted by the customer/stakeholders and transferred over as applicable to them. The project team will be adjourned and transitioned back to normal work (if the team was from different members of the organization) or migrate to work on new projects. There are numerous record keeping activities that are part of project close, which will be discussed in a future week in the course.

Week 1 Additional Resource

Please read the following article from the PMI Learning Library:

References

Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.