Project Monitoring and Controlling: How to Run the Project

The executing process is like launching a boat. The project finally gets underway. The executing process starts with lining up the people and other resources you need to perform the project. Once you get team members on board you help them get familiar with their assignments and the overall project environment. You also set the place to store project information and save a baseline of your plan that you will used to compare with actual performance.

Monitoring represents collecting data about where the project stands. Since project never sticks to the plan you so carefully prepare you have to figure out how to respond to the changes, surprises and problems that arise.

Controlling is when you implement course corrections to get your project back on track.

Executing a project

The executing process starts when the project plan has been approved and project work can finally begin.

The first step in the executing process is usually procurement. You might work with the core team for the initiating and planning processes; but executing is when you bring on the rest of the team and acquire equipment and materials the project requires. If team members come from within your organization procurement might be as simple as telling your in-house team that its time to report for duty. For resources outside your organization the procurement process includes a few additional steps:

• Solicitation

• Evaluation

• Selection

• Contracting

• Ongoing management

Solicitation often begins with a request for proposal, abbreviated as RFP which a typical way to ask vendors for proposals or bids. An RFP describes the services or resources you need, when you need them, and your budget for the work. It is a good idea to include the criteria you will use to select the vendor, so companies can decide whether or not to bid. In addition include instructions and the deadline for submitting a proposal, and the date you will announce your decision.

Once you have all the vendor's proposals or bids you hunker down and evaluate the responses using the criteria you identified. Then you select the winner. The selection process depends on the size and complexity of the project. Evaluation and selection might be as easy as filling a spreadsheet with ratings and choosing the vendor with the highest score. For large jobs you might whittle down the submissions down to a shortlist of vendors and ask each vendor in the second round to prepare a more detailed presentation or demonstrate what they have to offer.

Contracting is when you prepare and sign a contract for the resources you need. A contract can be short and sweet or long and complex; and all depends on the project and the work.

Contracts usually include:

• a statement of work

• terms and conditions

• deliverables

• deadlines

• and the price

Contracts typically fall into several categories:

• Fixed-price contracts work when you project is well defined. This type of contract places the risk on the vendor because the vendor is paid a fixed amount no matter how much time the work takes how much it costs.

• Time and materials contracts pay for the time worked and expenses incurred. The project accepts most of the risk so it’s common to include a not to exceed a value clause, so there is a limit on the price.

• A cost-plus contract is like time and materials with the addition of penalties or rewards based on the vendor's performance and with the retainer you agree to pay for a specified amount of time and define the work as you go.

Once you have a team assembled hold a kick-off meeting to introduce all the players. The project sponsor and customer can describe the mission and get everyone motivated. You can review the project plan with the team and explain how things will work, such as how to communicate or how change request will be handled.

During executing, you also designate a repository for information generated why you're running the project. Although it's usually electronic this repository is called a project notebook. Projects produced a mountain of information; your project plan, specifications, reports and so on. Many people need access to these files, so be sure to set your project notebook up where team members can get to it.

One last item before you dives into work. Establish a baseline for your approved project plan and other project documents. You can save baselines in your project management software, or save baseline versions of planned documents. That way as the project progresses you can measure any variance between your plan and what actually happens

Understanding team dynamics

Developing your project team into a finely tuned machine is important, because you will get more productivity from your people and higher quality results.

Bruce Tuckman’s (developmental sequence in small groups) forming, storming, norming, performing is one model that describes a typical phases the teams go through.

The first-team stages called forming because the individuals are just starting to form into a team. They aren’t yet sure of their goals as a team, and they don't know who does what. During the forming stage you have to define the team’s goals clearly and give them direction. Like other youngsters teams in the forming stage tend to resist and challenge authority, so be prepared to answer their questions and earn their respect.

Storming is the second stage. As team members start to work out the relationships with each other power struggles often occur. Storming teams have difficulty making decisions because of disagreements, at the same time those disagreements lead to communication which helps members grow as a team. When a team is storming you have to help the team members stay focused on their goals and help them make the decisions.

After the storm is over you finally have a team. Teams don't always reach the performing stage but if they do it's pretty impressive. They know what they are supposed to accomplish, who is supposed to do what and they often get things done very quickly, all without any help from you. You only have to step in if the team asks.

Managing team resources

As a project manager you have to motivate the people who work on your project. There are 8 methods that you can use to strengthen your working relationships and motivate your team members.

1. Communicate roles and responsibilities clearly to your team members. You can build your relationships with your team members by helping them understand what they responsible for and what you expect of them

2. Give people specific and achievable goals. Challenging, though achievable goals can be very motivating, team members usually dig deeper to respond to the challenges you set

3. Provide support and help remove obstacles that get in the way. If your people can’t resolve issues or remove obstacles, help them in any way you can. That way they can focus on the work they are supposed to do.

4. Respect your people. They’re crucial components to your project, because project work wouldn’t get done without them. Being respectful build good relationships, motivates your people, and helps you get the best your team has to offer.

5. Provide feedback quickly. Providing positive reinforcement helps build rapport and ensures that people do more of what works well. Someone does something wrong, jumping quickly to explain what they should be doing in a tactful way.

6. Consistently tell the truth. You will earn people's trust by telling the truth, even if they don't like what they hear. If you can, explain why you’re making the request or decisions that you do.

7. Communicate regularly with team members. Status and lesson learning are great ways to find out about what people are doing and how well they are doing it; and of course comparing their progress on their assignments to the baseline shows whether they’re as productive as should be.

8. Handle people problems quickly if they do come up. The answer could be as easy as telling someone what they're supposed to do or explaining the effect they are having on others. It is important to be upfront while at the same time being tactful and respectful.

If it turns out that someone isn't qualified to perform his or her assignments, you can consider adding time or money or finding other people to help or even take over. In this situation look at your work packages and requests to functional managers to make sure you define them clearly.

If you have to replace someone, work with the functional managers to get someone else. If you can’t replace the person you might have to reset stakeholders’ expectations from schedule, budget, scope or quality.

Leadership is one of the most important characteristics of a project manager. By using the techniques describe here, you can build effective working relationships and motivate your people.

Gathering data

Once work begins on your project you need information about what's been done, and what's left to do, so you can see whether your project is progressing the way it should. The data you need depends on what the customer and other stakeholders consider important because schedule and budget usually topped the list. Information about hours worked and money spent are givens.

Here are some of the data to gather on a project:

• Find out when task actually start. A task can take the work hours you estimated but if it starts two weeks late it could delay your project.

• Gather actual work hours or in some cases the actual duration. Tracking hours work is more effort, but you get a better picture of task progress and the labor costs associated with the work.

• Ask how much work or duration still remains. These values not only tell you how much longer a task will run but also whether or not your original estimate was on target.

If possible set up an automated way to obtain the information you need about tasks such as through email a web forum or enterprise wide project status reporting tool

Evaluating progress

Once you've collected data from your team you can evaluate your projects progress. You have to look at your project from several angles to uncover problems and figure out what to do about them.

First examine the project schedule, because delays can lead to other problems. Compare the current schedule to your original plan. Looking at a Gantt chart helps you see whether tasks are ahead of, behind or right on schedule; and by how much. For example, by showing your original baseline schedule with bars in one color and your current schedule with another color, variants values tell you the exact difference between your baseline and your current schedule. It’s helpful to home in on problem tasks. If you use a scheduling program there are often filters and views that provide early warnings of delays.

Next, look at cost. Cost issues can arise if tasks take more hours to complete. The cost increases can also occur due to higher resource costs or paying overtime. Cost variances show the difference between your baseline costs and the current schedule costs.

Understanding earned value analysis

Earned value analysis evaluates how much a project has earned based on work that's been completed. In other words a project’s earns value by completing work. You will truly appreciate earned value when you understand how basic project measures can be deceiving.

Supposed 50% of your projects duration has come and gone and 50% of the budget has been spent sound like things are right on track. However, if only 25% of the work is complete you have a problem; you have to finish 75% of the work but with only 50% of the duration and with 50% of the money left. There’s a good chance that won't happen.

Earned value analysis can uncover problems like that because of the way it looks at work and cost over time. It presents your schedule and on budget in monetary terms that means you sees all aspects of your projects performance in the same units. Of course costs are in monetary terms but you measure work in terms of money by calculating how much it costs for people to perform the work. Earned value analysis is based on three measures:

1. You measure planned value, that's how much you plan to spend and complete the work scheduled through the status date. You might hear it called budgeted cost of work scheduled.

2. Value is the amount of money you've earned by completing work. you may hear a value called budgeted cost of work performed.

3. The actual cost for the completed work is the key measure. Looking at these values in a graph makes it easy to see whether your project is on schedule and within budget. Here’s how you read in a value graph:

1. time is along the horizontal axis and cost is on the vertical axis

2. you want to see earned value above planned value that means you've completed more work than you planned; in other words the task or project is ahead of schedule. In this example earned value is below planned value so this project is behind schedule.

3. you want to see the actual cost below earned value. That means you've actually spend less for the work you've completed than you estimated. In this project actual cost is above earned value so the project is also over budget.

Earned value analysis includes more measures that are helpful for evaluating your project performance, you can read the more detailed discussion on earned value here:

Reporting on progress

As project manager you're always communicating what's going on to other people; like team members who do work, or stakeholders who want new status. To make sure that you tell people what they need to know when they needed to now it, you have to set up a reporting system.

A good reporting system provides accurate and meaningful information in a timely fashion without making data collection a burden.

During the planning process you created a communication plan. In that plan you identified your audiences and determine how you're going to communicate with them. Now that you're putting the plan into action:

First, gather the information you need from your team. The most common frequency is once a week. For example you ask your team for status mid-day on Fridays and then produce reports for that week's accomplishments.

Then produce and distribute reports to the audiences you identified and using the methods you chose. For example, status report usually cover what happened, the work that was scheduled, work that was completed, and work that didn't go according to plan. Report any variances and how you plan to correct them. In addition, report problems or issues along with the steps you plan to take to resolve them. For the management team you might prepare accumulative status report that shows what happened up throug the status date that helps management focus on the big picture of the project. You can produce additional reports if they ask for details.

Dashboards have become popular because they show information graphically and make it easier to see what's going on. For example you can flag progress with stop lights. A green light says everything is fine, but yellow light shows a small variance; and a red light indicates a larger problem.

Now that you’re using your communication plan your audiences may ask for different information, a different schedule or different communication methods. Don't hesitate to adjust your reporting system to ensure that your project communication is as effective as possible

Understanding financial measures

Financial calculations for projects are known as capital budgeting analysis. These measures look at the return of the money invested in a project. You need to know how much a project costs, how much the project saves or earn, and when money flows in or goes out.

After you build your project schedule, you have the information on cost and their timing. The income and its timing usually come from whoever proposes the project. That payback period is how long the project takes to earn back the money invested. The project cost $100,000 and it brings in sales of $10,000 per month so the payback period is 10 months.

The payback period looks better for projects that generate money early on. Another potential problem is that payback period assumes that the project makes money long enough to pay back the money spent.

Here are some financial measure you can use on the project:

Net present value or NPV is a more accurate measure because it uses the time value of money. The buying power of money decreases over time because of inflation which is why money in the future is worth less than money today. You set a target rate of return and NPV uses costs and income to calculate whether your project meets exceeds falls short of the target return.

Internal rate of return or IRR, shows the annual return taking into account the time value of money. It is like an annual percentage yield you earned in a bank account. If the IRR exceeds your target return, the project makes financial sense. Keep in mind IRR is great when the direction of money switches only once. For example when you have expenses during the project and then income after that; but its cash flows switch back and forth between positive and negative you might get the wrong answer.

Communicating effectively

At the project manager you have to communicate with people at all levels from the customer and the management team to the people who do project work communication isn't just howling someone something is about getting a message across to the other person understands that and often does something with good communication skills help you and your team get more and better work done first is up to you to get your point across/

your audience wider messages important that gets their attention so they receive your message second get to the point that way you get through even if your time is limited or your audience has a short attention span third tell your message to your audience this means focus on what is relevant to your audience and used terms that they understand for the past 11 pro active if you have to discuss a problem state the problem and then your plan panel are some other tips from proving communication and listening as important as talking when you're the audience pay full attention to the person talking to you yourself found in a text messages knowing else it's tough but worth practising to go up or down what the unspoken communication in person Vajpayee language and facial expressions on the phone was intonations on someone's voice chillers face-to-face meetings from difficult delicate crucial information to you and your audience can receive spoken and unspoken messages keep an open mind conversation meetings are a waste if you are going to listen to what other people say to improve understanding how phrase what you've heard as the other person to do that by putting the information in your own words you demonstrate that you do understand the game the other person chairs to correct you if you misunderstood finely use email effectively it's fascinating but it presents challenges to another communication take time to read a clear and effective method it saves time and reduces back and forth email valleys is one of subject lines if you're asking for action and have a deadline include those in subject start with the points start with what he won on what's important and then backfill with the detail a good emails like a newspaper article which present the information in the initial paragraph to read your messages spelling handling mistakes and grammatical errors can radically change the meaning of the message confirmed that your emails arrive if you don't get a response followed with another email call or visit the capital of humour because it doesn't work well in email use humour only with people you know well and let people know you're doing it remember good communication is something that you have to work at constantly but by doing so you and your team will work more effectively

5-11 Running meetings effectively

News chillout time and energy the people could be using to get project work done because meanings include several people they rack up cost more quickly than other work but sometimes the best way to work and communicate Sophie Dall hold a meeting make it count the first step to a productive meeting is to know what you're trying to accomplish identify the purpose of the meeting and the results are trying to obtain such as approval move forward or to resolve an issue that can create an agenda in use agenda to make sure you cover every item keep the discussions on topic and to finish remaining on time on your agenda with the topics to discuss include a time estimate for each topic the more people you have an meaning the harder it is to get things done the third step is to limit the attendees to the people you need to accomplish the goal for the attendees achieve is to prepare schedule the meaning when it works for the attendees and the needing invitation ahead of time and start and finish meanings on time even at all attendees are there don't backtrack when people shortly six facilitator meaning to keep everyone focused on the meanings objectives as part manager you have lots to do an amazing if possible ask someone else to be the facilitator of the facilitator kicks off the meaning with a brief introduction the purpose of the needing the agenda topics the attendees and the ground rules for interaction 73 good meeting notes how else we are no decisions you've reached action items you've identified and who is responsible for the during a meeting you can document points are waiting for a butcher of passable appoint someone to take notes to the meaning you can edit the notes court action items was responsible than when identity distribute the notes to attendees and anyone else who needs to know finally if you would like to further explore this topic I recommend you watched David Crenshaw was worst affected meanings in the online training library

5-12 Getting a project back on track

A project is a balancing act trying to maintain equilibrium between scope schedule cost and quality and sometimes other measures in this video discuss how to make changes when you project goes of course first considered solutions you can authorise you can proceed with your changes without asking for permission for example if you shop ASSIGNMENTS to complete work more quickly or a lower cost you don't affect anyone outside the project you can reassign without waiting for someone to say okay second if you don't have enough is already back stakeholders for approval options like lengthening the schedule increasing the budget reducing scope typically require approval from the customer stakeholders are management team if you ask for permission bewailing the present one-on-one recommendations along with the pros and cons of each one you also have to be weighed against questions about the solution you recommend any other solutions you considered but ruled out finally if you organisation runs a portfolio of projects you might have to go beyond your project stakeholders for example if you need people from other projects were contingency funds will probably have to go to the management team to ask the people of money you need to matter how well you manager projects will have to make changes from time to time by managing projects well you'll have a better chance of receiving the support you need from stakeholders for management

5-13 Managing change, risk, and quality

During the planning process you create a player how you would manage changes risks and quality of the project is in progress you perform the steps in those poignant to manage changes herald the risks that occur in control poorly first win change requests come in follow the steps in your change management plan to determine whether you should add them to your player remember you add every change requested is made to change request log to contract the request whether it's denied by the change review board were approved and added to your player when he developed your risk management plan you identify the risks to monitor and the response you would use to him about now the project is underway you are someone you delegate keeps an eye on each rescue tracking and regularly update risk status sometimes risks go away as the project progresses in close the other times unexpected risks occur*occur was launched the response you choosing your plan then track the results of that response will also perform activities to measure quality and evaluate the level of quality your project is delivering those activities depend on the project of quality given at the level you require determine how to improve it with results of the required quality review your prophecies to see if you can achieve that quality more easily remember managing change risk and quality isn't a one-time effort what you project is running continuously watch for change requests milder risks and measure quality

You can also check the following articles:

• Exploring Project Management

• The Project Initiation Phase: How to Start a Project

• The Project Planning Phase: How to Plan for the Project

• Building a Project Schedule

• Project Monitoring and Controlling: How to Run the Project

• The Project Closing Phase: The Project Conclusion

There are many sources of information to learn more about Project management. Here are some books I recommend:

• Successful Project Management: Applying Best Practices, Proven Methods, and Real-World Techniques with Microsoft Project by Bonnie Biafore

• Project Planning and Control by James P. Lewis

• Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun

• Fast Forward MBA in Project Management

• 101 Project Management Problems and How to Solve Them: Practical Advice for Handling Real-World Project Challenges by Tom Kendrick.

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