Project Management Tools - Monitoring and Controlling Projects

Controlling Projects - There are 3 critical areas that many project managers overlook when monitoring and controlling projects, and they are often the root cause of project failure. These 3 project management tools areas are the management of; suppliers, procurement and communications. To help you to monitor and control each area efficiently, we’ve described each in further detail below…

Monitor and Control Your Projects (Part 3)

Having previously covered the management of time, cost, quality, change, risk and issues – the final step in the “Monitor and Control” newsletter series is the management of suppliers, procurement and communications.

If you can monitor and control all of these aspects smoothly and efficiently, then you will have a great chance of delivering your project successfully. So let’s tackle the last 3 remaining areas now…

Managing Suppliers

Always make sure you appoint suppliers through a formal process. Even if you’re appointing suppliers you know and have worked with for some time, always create a statement of work with your project management tools which defines the exact scope of work that you wish them to perform.

Next create a formal detailed supplier contract for the scope of work to be completed. In this contract, define the work to be completed, the responsibilities of both parties, the performance criteria and terms and conditions for the relationship. Then if things go sour, you have something to fall back on.

In your contract, have milestones which specify what it is that you expect them to have delivered and by when. Then at each milestone date, complete a formal review of deliverables completed to date, vs. the deliverables specified in the contract. If things change during the project, then amend the contract accordingly. The contract should always represent the nature of the agreement and never become “out dated”.

You can then closely monitor and control your suppliers performance.

Control Procurement

As well as managing your suppliers overall performance, you also need to monitor and control the procurement of goods and services from those suppliers.

Controlling procurement is all about reviewing and accepting goods and services once they have been delivered by your supplier. You need to implement project management tools through procurement process which enables your team to take ownership of the item being delivered, review it against pre-defined criteria and approve payment for it, based on your supplier contract.

Tip: Always make sure that you issue Purchase Orders for products you require from suppliers. Create a detailed description of the product you require on the Purchase Order, so that you have something to measure against when it arrives.

Perform Communications

Communication is King! As part of the “monitor and control” phase in a project, you’ll need to keep a constant eye on the communications that are taking place.

You should always have a formal Communications Plan in place so that key messages are communicated to the right people at the right time. You can then monitor and control your project communications by making sure that the activities on your communications plan are completed at the right time, and in the right manner.

Make sure you have a feedback process so that if the wrong messages are received by staff, suppliers or stakeholders, then you’ll be immediately informed and can take action to resolve it.

So that’s in. In these last 3 newsletters, we’ve explained how to monitor and control your project by managing:

• Time, Cost and Quality
• Change, Risks, and Issues
• Suppliers, Procurement and Communications

By using these key project management tools, you can deliver projects quickly and efficiently, with less stress and effort than before.

• For the complete set of Project Management Tools then click Project Management Templates.
• See Online Project Management for smart software that helps you implement projects.

Controlling Projects – with Project Management Templates

One of the biggest challenges you will face as a Project Manager is “scope creep” using project management templates. That’s when during the Execution phase of the project, the planned scope of work changes, often causing delays and expense.

To avoid this, you need to carefully Monitor and Control your projects, by implementing change, risk and issue processes. Here are some tips on how to do it…

Monitor and Control Your Projects (Part 2)

So things aren’t going to plan because your customer has changed the scope of the project? Don’t worry, this is a normal event for a Project Manager, as many projects are time consuming and while the project has been progressing, the business pressures faced by the customer have changed.

The art is not in minimizing change, but in managing it properly when it does occur. Here’s how to do it…

Monitor Change

The most typical cause of a project going off-the-rails is that the scope has grown out of control, by “osmosis”. The client has asked for changes, the team have had new ideas and your nice neat set of project tasks now look like spaghetti.

To succeed, you need to keep tight control of your project scope, by being vigilant about change. Do this by implementing a change management process. As soon as you identify a request for change in your project, document it formally by specifying where the change has come from, why it’s needed and its impact on your project objectives.

And if the change is likely to affect the target end dates, budget or deliverables, then get your sponsor and customers approval before implementing it. Don’t be afraid to ask for more time, people or money if you need it, especially if the change was initiated by the customer.

Never allow change to run your project. Instead, run your project by managing change!

Control Risks

As a Project Manager, it’s all too easy to roll your sleeves up and get stuck into the project delivery. But when you do this, it’s often hard to keep your head above water. You may end up managing at the micro level and high level risks to the project may pass you by.

It’s hard, but try and remain a little divorced from the detailed day-to-day operation of your project where possible. In this way, you can continually access the overall risk to the project from the outside and pounce on new risks when they appear.

Also, implement a risk management process to formalize the way that risks are identified, assessed and mitigated. For each risk that appears in your Project Management Templates, quantify its potential impact on the project, then take immediate action to minimize the likelihood of it occurring. Always create contingency plans, so that if the risk does occur, you can go to “plan b” and minimize its effect on the project delivery.

Resolve Issues

Resolving issues sounds easy right? The challenge however, is not just in resolving every issue that turns your way, but instead monitoring all of the issues that occur on a project and only resolving issues that are likely to impact on the project outcome. It’s very infrequent on a project that you’ll have time to resolve every issue that crops up — so be picky.

To make sure that you resolve issues in a timely manner, you need to put in place an issue management process. This helps you to review all of the issues that crop up, assess their impact, delegate the ones that can be handled by others and resolve those that are critical to the project.

And there you have it! By managing change, risks and issues, you’ll be able to avoid scope creep and boost your chances of achieving project success!

See the World’s smartest Project Management Software. It includes a project dashboard, task manager and collaboration tools for managing projects.

Project Management Forms - Monitoring & Controlling Projects, Part I

How should you monitor and control your projects using project management forms? It’s a good question, because everyone does it differently. We believe that the processes you use to monitor and control projects should be the same, regardless of the size and type of project you undertake. So read on, to find out how to effectively…

Monitor and Control Your Projects (Part 1)

After you’ve started up and planned your projects, you’ll move into the Execution (or “delivery”) phase in the project life cycle.

This is typically the longest phase in the project, as it’s in this phase that the physical deliverables are built for the customer. Whether your project is to build a construction complex, computer system or land a space vehicle on mars, you will need to very carefully monitor progress and control delivery. Otherwise, your project could go off the rails.

So to monitor and control delivery, you need to implement 9 critical project management forms. We’ll describe the first 3 processes here, and in the next newsletter we’ll cover the remaining 4 critical processes or you.

Critical Process #1: Time Management

Every Project Manager knows that the customer expects their project to be delivered “on time”. But how many Project Managers actually record every hour spent by staff on the project?

To ensure on-time delivery, that’s what you need to do: implement a time management form. This process will help you to monitor the time spent by all of the members of your team, so that you can control how time is spent.

It’s not just about “having great time management skills” either, it’s about putting in place a process for recording time spent by staff by using timesheets and recording that time against the project plan.

That way, you can create an accurate picture of the current status of the project to determine whether or not it is likely to finish under / on / over the time allotted.

Critical Process #2: Cost Management

Few Project Managers can tell you for every day of the project, exactly how much of their budget they have spent to date. The reason is that many of the project costs are often difficult to track, especially when they relate to the use of equipment and consumption of materials.

But to deliver you project within budget, you need to monitor and control all of the costs that accrue, on a very regular basis. You can do this by implementing a cost management process.

Cost Management is all about accurately recording project expenses, as they occur. By using project management forms – Expense Forms and an Expense Register, you can monitor all project costs and control expenditure when unplanned expenses arise. You don’t need to be an accountant, you just need to keep an eye on the overall project expenditure on a weekly basis and act quickly when any issues arise.

Critical Process #3: Quality Management

It’s often said that the hardest thing to monitor is “quality”. Most Project Managers find it difficult to determine exactly what the customer expects in terms of deliverable “quality”, let alone measure the actual levels of quality achieved. But you must try.

To do this properly, you need to implement quality management process. By following this process, you can set quality targets to be achieved and gain agreement from your customer.

Then you can use Quality Assurance and Quality Control techniques to monitor and control the actual quality of your project deliverables. If your quality levels drop below the targets set, then you can take action to rectify it. By constantly reviewing quality levels and ensuring that they always meet the target, you can feel confident that your customer will sign off your project as complete, once all of the deliverables have been produced.

And there you have it. By implementing time, cost and quality management, you can take the first steps needed to properly monitor and control your project delivery with these Project Management Forms.

Use Project Management Templates to monitor and control your projects effectively.

Project Management Templates – Project Charter

Want to improve your project success using project management templates? Most Project Managers will tell you that the best way to ensure success is to define your project clearly from the outset. That way, all of your team members, stakeholders and customers will have a single view of what the project needs to achieve. So the best way to define you project clearly is to:

Create a Project Charter

A Project Charter is a document that is completed at the very start of the project life cycle. It sets out the project vision, objectives and scope, so that you can gain a clear picture of what it is that the project must achieve.

It also describes the deliverables, the people involved in producing them and the timeframes for delivery.

To create a Charter for your project, take these 5 steps:

Step 1: Set the Vision

Every team needs a “Vision”. By clarifying the vision for the project and the goals that must be met, your team will gain a single collective understanding of what it is expected of them. When setting out your vision, make sure that you:

• Gain agreement from the Sponsor first
• Write it using clear, meaningful words
• Communicate it to all team members

Don’t email the vision out to your team. Instead, present it personally, so that they have a first hand understanding of what it is, why it’s important and what it should mean to them.

Step 2: Define the Scope

With a clear vision, the next most important step is to define the project scope. The scope lists the activities and deliverables that must be completed, in order to achieve the vision.

Having a detailed scope helps you to plan your project effectively. It also helps you to prevent “scope creep” which is when unplanned deliverables and activities are added to your To Do list by your customer.

Only by clarifying the project scope at the outset, can you manage your customers needs, by telling them for instance that a request is “out of scope” and therefore requires additional time or money to complete it.

Step 3: Structure the Project Team

So you know your end target (i.e. your vision) and deliverables to be produced (i.e. your scope), you now need to identify the people who are going to do the work.

Create a Project Organizational Structure chart which show all of the customers, stakeholders, team members and other people involved with your project. Depict the reporting lines between each, and where possible, add lines of communication as well.

Documenting the organization structure is important, as it clarifies the number of people needed to complete your project and the responsibilities of each member in your team. It also helps you to create Job Descriptions for each member of your team.

Step 4: Create a Roadmap

Then create a project roadmap. This is a high level project plan. Using project management templates that lists the phases, activities and tasks that your project will pass through, to complete the entire project management life cycle.

As well as setting out the activities needed to complete the project from start to finish, you need to identify the resources needed for each project phase. And finally, identify the overall budget required to complete the project, so that you gain financial approval to undertake the project, as early as possible in the project life cycle.

Step 5: Identify Risks and Issues

The last step to take when creating a Project Charter is to list the risks and issues that are currently apparent. By listing these items, you can make your Project Sponsor aware of the overall level of risk of the project and enlist their support to resolve them early.

By taking these 5 steps, you’re ready to create a Project Charter to initiate projects more successfully. If you would to implement these 5 steps for your projects, then get the Project Charter Template now.

Want to boost your project management success? Check out this Online Project Management solution.

Project Management Life Cycle – Delivering Under Budget

One could say that your biggest challenge as a Project Manager is delivering “within budget” (within your project management life cycle).

If you are late then you can consider adding more staff, if the quality of your deliverables is not good enough then you can consider scheduling more time, but if you are over budget, then there are not a lot of options for you.  So to help you out, we have described here how to:

Manage Projects “Within Budget”

Every Project Manager has a fixed budget.  It is one of those things that makes a “project” a project.  If you had an on-going annual budget, then you would be managing an operational activity, not a project.

The budgeting challenge for a Project Manager is that often by the time that they are allocated to a project, the budget has already been set by the Sponsor.  The Project Manager does not have any real “say” in the matter.  So how to can you manage your project within budget, when you have not created the budget in the first place?  Here are 10 top tips on how…

Tip 1: Revise the budget

As soon as you are allocated to a project, make it one of your first jobs to revise the budget set in its project management life cycle.  Even if the budget has not formally been set, the Project Sponsor will have some ideas on the overall amount of budget available for use.  If you think that the budget is insufficient, tell your Sponsor as early as possible.

Tip 2: Create a Financial Plan

Whether a budget already exists of not, your next step is to create a detailed Financial Plan in your project management life cycle for your project.  This plan will set out all of the planned expenses and when they are likely to occur.  Make sure that your Sponsor accepts your plan and that you are comfortable that you can deliver the project against it.

Tip 3: Baseline the plan

Right, so you are now managing the project against a detailed Financial Plan, not a loose budget or general guide on what should be spent. You have a detailed view of the forecast project costs, against which to measure project progress.  You should now baseline the plan by getting your Sponsors endorsement and communicating it to your team leaders.

Tip 4: The plan is the plan

Many people manage their project against the total amount of expenditure available.  Do not fall into this trap, as you will always think you have enough funds to complete the project.  Instead, manage the project against the detailed Financial Plan you have set out.  If some items go over budget, investigate why and fix the issues.  Only by managing at this level of detail can you build an accurate view of the projects performance against budget.

Tip 5: Get serious

If you are serious about delivering your projects within budget, then you need to implement some form of Cost Management Process. This process will give you formal procedures for the identification, recording and tracking of project costs.

Tip 6: Use Expense Forms

Ensure that your staff record all expenses using Expense Forms.  Only by formally recording expenses can you build an accurate picture of the overall cost of the project to date.

Tip 7: Register your expenses

By using an Expense Register or log, you can create a summarized view of the project cost to date, at any point in time.

Tip 8: Report progress

We have seen some Project Managers tell their Sponsor that they are likely to be over budget the week before they were due to finish!  If you even have an inkling that you might be over budget, tell your Project Sponsor about it as early as possible.  It will help you gain buy in and they may even be able to help you out.

Tip 9: Do not be afraid

If you need more money and you have exhausted all other options, then ask for it.  Do not be afraid to tell your Project Sponsor that you have reached this point.  Remember, there are quite often very valid reasons for needing more money throughout the project.

Tip 10: Balance time, cost and quality evenly

Remember, your goal is to deliver the project on time, to cost and quality.  Never compromise time and quality to bring your project in under budget.  It is a challenging job, but always try and balance time, cost and quality fairly.  You can do it!

If you would like help managing projects in there project management life cycle  sapm and within budget, then these Project Management Templates will give you all of the templates you need…