SPM Chapter9

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Monitoring and control

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Monitoring and control

CHAPTER

Objectives

Monitor the progress of projects;

Assess the risk of slippage;

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Monitoring and control

9.1 Introduction

• Focus on ensuring progress. • Requires monitoring

:-• Requires monitoring

:-– What is happening;

– Comparison of actual achievement against the schedule and where necessary;

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9.2 Creating the framework

• Exercising control over a project and ensuring that targets are met is a matter of regular monitoring;

met is a matter of regular monitoring; • Finding out what is happening;

• And comparing it with current targets.

• If there is a mismatch between the planned outcomes and the actual ones then either replanning is needed to bring the

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Start

Publish initial plan

Gather project information

Compare progress

And targets Satisfactory

Project

Take remedial action publish Revised plan

No

Project completed

End project

Review project

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President and General Manager

Planning and Scheduling Reporting and Monitoring

Distribution

Project authorization and expenditure control system information flow

General Manager Director of Research Director of Manufacturing Administration Administration Review, type, And prepare Final copies Project review And signature approval Initiate Project Record Distribute copies

Post to weekly Project status Report and Project Expenditure And control Distribution To directors And managers Feeder copy Review and Action as required Prepare and Forward Management Reports as required Responsible Engineer

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• Project control cycle, project control is a continual process of monitoring progress against that plan and, where necessary, monitoring progress against that plan and, where necessary, revising the plan to take account of deviations.

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Responsibility

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Categories of reporting

Oral formal

regular Weekly or monthlyprogress meetings While reports may be oral, formal writtenminutes should be kept

Oral formal

ad hoc End-of-stage reviewmeetings While largely oral, likely to receive andgenerate written reports

Written formal Job sheets, progress Normally weekly using forms

Written formal

regular Job sheets, progressreport Normally weekly using forms

Written formal

ad hoc Exception reports,change reports

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Assessing progress

• Made on the basis of information collected and collated at regular intervals or when specific events occur.

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Setting checkpoints

• Regular;

• Tied to specific events such as the production of a report or other deliverable.

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Taking snapshots

• Progressive report – the size and degree of risk of the project or part of project under their control.

• Collecting data at the end of each week ensures that

information is provided while memories are still relatively fresh and provides a mechanism for individuals to review and reflect upon their progress.

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9.3 Collecting the data

Partial completion reporting Risk reporting

Risk reporting

• Identify the key (first level) elements for assessment in a piece

of work;

• Break these key elements into constituent elements (second

level);

• Assess each of the second level elements on the scale green for

‘on target’, amber for ‘not on target but recoverable’, and red

for ‘not on target and recoverable only with difficulty’; for ‘not on target and recoverable only with difficulty’;

• Review all the second level assessments to arrive at first level

assessments;

• Review first and second level assessments to produce an overall

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9.3 Collecting the data

Activity Assessment Sheet Staff _Justin

Staff

Week number 13 14 15 16 17 18

Activity summary

Component Comments

Screen handling procedure

Ref: _Activity:

Justin

Code & Test module C

File update procedure Housekeeping procedure Compilation

Test data runs

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9.4 Visualizing process

The Gantt chart

One of the simplest and oldest techniques for tracking project

progress is the Gantt chart. This is essentially an activity bar chart indicating scheduled activity dates and durations frequently

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The Slip chart

Gantt chart – the more the slip line bends, the greater the variation Gantt chart – the more the slip line bends, the greater the variation from the plan. Additional slip lines are added at intervals and as they build up, the project manager will gain an idea as to whether the

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The Ball chart

Ball chart – the circles indicate start and completion points for

activities. The circles initially contain the original scheduled dates. Whenever revisions are produced these are added as second dates in the appropriate circle until an activity is actually started or

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The Ball chart

Where the actual start or finish data for an activity is later than the target date, the circle is colored red. And where actual date is on time or earlier than target then the circle is color green.

31/3/99

31/3/99 Code & test module A 11/5/9921/5/99

6/4/99

8/4/99 Code & test module B 13/5/9917/5/99

8/4/99 17/5/99

21/4/99

23/4/99 12/5/9911/5/99

Code & test module C

29/3/99

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The timeline chart

The timeline chart is a method of recording and displaying the way in which targets have changed throughout the duration of the project.

- Planned time is plotted along the horizontal axis and elapsed time down

the vertical axis.

- The lines meandering down the chart represent scheduled activity

completion dates. Planned time

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9.5 Cost monitoring

Expenditure monitoring is an important component of project

control. Not only in itself, but also because it provides an indication of control. Not only in itself, but also because it provides an indication of the effort that has gone into a project. A project might be on time, but only because more money has been spent on activities than

originally budgeted. A cumulative expenditure chart provides a simple method of comparing actual and planned expenditure.

Planned cost

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9.5 Cost monitoring

Cost charts become much more useful if we add projected future costs calculated be adding the estimated cost of uncompleted work to the calculated be adding the estimated cost of uncompleted work to the cost already incurred. Fig.9.10 illustrates the additional information available once the revised cost schedule is included.

Cumulative

Cost ($) Revised estimate

Original total cost

in al co m pl et io n da te is ed co m pl et io n da te

Revised total cost

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9.6 Earned value

• Earned value analysis is based on assigning a ‘value’ to each task or work package based on the original expenditure forecasts.

or work package based on the original expenditure forecasts.

• The assigned value is the original budgeted cost for the item and is known as the baseline budget or budgeted cost of work

scheduled (BCWS).

• A task that has not started is assigned the value zero and when it has been completed, it is credited with the value of the task.

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Where tasks have been started but are not yet

complete, some consistent method of assigning an

• The 0/100 technique

• The 50/50 technique

complete, some consistent method of assigning an

earned value must be applied. Common methods in

software projects are:

• The 50/50 technique

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Baseline budget

• First stage in setting up an earned value analysis is to create the baseline budget.

• Baseline budget is based on the project plan and shows the forecast growth in earned value through time.

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Schedule variance (cost) Budget

variance Cost_variance Baseline budget (BCWS)

Actual cost to date (ACWP) Time now

Schedule variance (time)

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BCWS:

“Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled”

Planned cost of the total amount of work scheduled to be

performed by the milestone date.

80000 100000 120000

0 20000 40000

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ACWP:

“Actual Cost of Work Performed”

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BCWP:

Budgeted Cost of Work Performed

The planned (not actual) cost to complete the work that has

been done.

55000 80000

100000 120000

BCWP

49000 55000

20000 40000

60000 BCWP

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SV: Schedule Variance (BCWP-BCWS)

–

A comparison of amount of work performed during

–

A comparison of amount of work performed during

a given period of time to what was scheduled to

be performed.

–

A negative variance means the project is behind

schedule

CV: Cost Variance (BCWP-ACWP)

–

A comparison of the budgeted cost of work

performed with actual cost.

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Schedule Variance = BCWP-BCWS

$49,000 $49,000 - 55,000 SV = - $ 6,000

Cost Variance = BCWP-ACWP

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SPI: Schedule Performance Index

SPI=BCWP/BCWS

SPI<1 means project is behind schedule

CPI: Cost Performance Index

CPI= BCWP/ACWP

CPI<1 means project is over budget

CSI: Cost Schedule Index

(

CSI=CPI x SPI)

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SPI: BCWP/BCWS

49,000/55,000 = 0.891

CPI: BCWP/ACWP

49,000/56000 = 0.875

CSI: SPI x CPI

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9.7 Prioritizing monitoring

• Critical path activities

• Activities with no free float

• Activities with less than a specified float

• High-risk activities

• Activities using critical resources

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9.8 Getting the project back to target

There are two main strategies to consider when drawing up plans to bring a project back on target:

bring a project back on target:

• Shorten the critical path

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Shorten the critical path

• The overall duration of a project is determined by the current • The overall duration of a project is determined by the current

critical path, so speeding up non-critical path activities will not bring forward a project completion date.

• Extolling staff to ‘work harder’ might have some effect, although frequently a more positive form of action is required.

• Resource levels can be increased by making them available for longer.

longer.

• Project manager might consider allocating more efficient

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Reconsider the precedence requirements

• If attempting to shorten critical activities prove insufficient, the • If attempting to shorten critical activities prove insufficient, the next step is to consider the constraints by which some activities have to be deferred pending completion of others.

• One way to overcome precedence constraints is to subdivide an activity into a component that can start immediately and one that is still constrained as before.

• If we do decide to alter the precedence requirements is such a • If we do decide to alter the precedence requirements is such a

way, it is clearly important to be aware that quality might be

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9.9 Change control

Configuration librarian’s role

• The identification of all items that are subject to change control; • The establishment and maintenance of a central repository of

the master copies of all project documentation and software products;

• The setting up and running of a formal set of procedures to deal with changes;

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Change control procedures

1. One or more users might perceive a need for a modification to a system and ask for a change request to be passed to the

development staff.

2. The user management consider the change request and if they approve it pass it to the development management.

3. The development management delegate a member of staff to look at the request and to report on the practicality and cost of look at the request and to report on the practicality and cost of carrying out the change.

4. The development management report back to the user

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Change control procedures (cont…)

5. One or more developers are authorized to take copies of the master products that are to be modified.

6. The copies are modified.

7. When the development of new versions of the product has been completed the user management will be notified and copies of the software will be released for user acceptance testing.

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9.10 Conclusions

This chapter we have discussed the requirements for the continual monitoring of projects and the need of making progress visible. Among the important

points to emerge were: points to emerge were:

 Planning is pointless unless the execution of the plan is monitored

 Activities that are too long need to be subdivided to make them more

controllable

 Ideally, progress should be measured through the delivery of project

products

 Progress needs to be shown in a visually striking way, such as through ball

charts, in order to communicate information effectively

 Costs need to be monitored as well as elapsed time

 Delayed projects can often be brought back on track by shortening activity