Week 5 Project

Monitoring and Control Techniques

Once plans are set into motion, managers have to monitor and control events to turn out the results as planned.

Processes need to be set up so the management is aware of how things are going against the baseline budget,

schedule, and scope. The term "scope creep" refers to the tendency of projects to be punctuated by many changes

that go beyond the original scope of the project. Quite a few of these changes are, in fact, good ideas. While many changes compensate for early oversights or uncertainties needing to become clari�ed as the project goes along,

they do change the scope and affect the deliverables. These, in turn, affect schedules, costs, and resource

requirements of the entire project.

In order to manage hundreds of potential changes in any given project, a formal management function needs to be

established. The most common term, in this context, is con�guration management. Basically, the term

"con�guration" implies the overall scope, even though con�guration is almost always de�ned in exquisite detail.

In high-tech projects, if you have to make a change in the con�guration, a mechanism commonly called an

engineering change request is submitted. This is then considered by the con�guration control board for its

viability. At the other end of the spectrum, a change request may be made for reasons other than engineering;

possibly by an important external stakeholder.

In all cases, requests are evaluated and most are rejected. The ones accepted are carried out with little fanfare, as

they are already within the scope of the original project. If others go beyond the scope, especially those entailing

large changes, they need an amendment to the contract. The rework effort needed to amend a contract is reason enough to reject most changes.

You need to measure where your project really stands with respect to where it should actually be, and metrics

help you to make that comparison. Differences between these two situations are known as variances.

Variances can be positive or negative. With regard to schedule, a positive variance means the project is ahead of

schedule. With regard to costs, a positive variance means the project is below budget. To analyze the trend, you

need to collect the metrics and/or variances over time. Identifying a negative trend early in the life of the project provides an opportunity to respond quickly.

For reporting purposes, one method of applying metrics to projects is called the EVM. This method has become

particularly popular to use while making periodic reports to major external stakeholders in the case of large

projects.

Additional Materials

View a Pdf Transcript of The EVM (media/week5/SU_MGT3035_W5_L4_G1.pdf? _&d2lSessionVal=ci8aH3u0fFqOZQwWEPolysax6&ou=85477)

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