Seminar PM Week 6 DQ

6-1 Discussion: Project Metrics

In response to peers, note the differences and the similarities in the ways metrics are used among the various project examples provided. Respond to peers who have a different approach or experience from your own and discuss how you might adopt your peer's approach for your own project example.

Janis Lullen

Hello all,

In my profession, my team uses project metrics for two main reasons; 1) to monitor if we are still on track to complete the project within the allotted time, and 2) to see if any controls put in place have created the desired effect on a particular element within the project. “Control is the process of comparing actual performance against plan to identify deviations, evaluate possible alternative courses of actions, and take appropriate corrective action.” (Project Management: The Managerial Process, 2021).

We would capture these metrics initially in Excel and use each touchpoint as a milestone to see if we were getter better at decreasing process times or if our controls were actually having the opposite effect on our goal. Our practice for reporting project metrics would be a brief meeting every two weeks to review the purpose of the project, the control measures that were implemented, and analyze the data. If the actual performance time was trending favorably, we would confirm and document the revised process steps within the work instructions. If the actual performance time was adverse to our goal, we would revert back to the previous milestone (touchpoint) and determine an alternative control for the project.

For example, we began an operational project to cutdown processing time within the Pick and Pack department. We captured the initial processing time within the department to establish a baseline. We segmented the work instructions and reviewed each step for possible waste opportunities. For my role, I supervised the actual operators’ execution of the process to determine any inconsistencies within the work instructions or identify possible performance actions that effected the processing time. Every two weeks during the project review, I would present my findings to the team. One specific action that was noted was an employee performing additional steps that were not necessary nor required which added to the processing time. I reported and presented my findings to the team with a recommendation that the employee be retrained on the work instruction and monitored to ensure the steps were being followed. This action took overall a month to implement the control and monitor, but upon comparison, this cut down an average of 10 minutes of processing time for this associate.

REFERENCE

Larson, E. 2021. “Chapter 13: Progress and Performance Measurement and Evaluation: Project Management: The Managerial Process

8th Edition.” McGraw Hill Education. Eighth Edition. pp. 474-531. ISBN 978-1-260-23886-0.

Response –

Samantha Perez-Montgomery

I don’t have any experience in big project metrics, but I do work daily with solar projects and have worked in different areas of the project life cycle in the past. Each home that goes solar with us is its own project that is supposed to follow certain steps or milestones. The baseline is the process it follows and based on that process we have SLA’s, service level agreements, which is like our promise to the stakeholder that we will get a particular milestone viewed in a certain amount of time. Reports are run by our supervisors to ensure we are adhering to those SLA’s. We keep track of a lot of the information using Salesforce and Oracle. Reports are done within Salesforce too.

If we fall behind on any particular SLA, overtime is usually what it takes to correct it. Sometimes we will hire someone new or an intern if it seems to be a longer trend. Depending on the milestone that needs work different actions will be taken and sometimes process improvements as well. I recall a time the sales team was not getting all the documentation necessary for a contract to be considered complete. The result of that issue was that the sales team was talked to and trained on how to improve their contract submissions. A lot of the analysis happened with upper management so I’m not exactly sure of all the details.

My part in taking corrective action was mainly being there for overtime. There was once a time I was able to be part of a process improvement which helped improve our time to complete the milestone. We were meeting our SLA but our goal that year was to try and shorten the amount of time it took for a project to be completed in general. While it wasn’t corrective action it was due in part to our metrics as a whole showing we had a project life cycle time that was longer than the customer would have liked.

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