1. Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme
Managing Complexity in the Face of Uncertainty
Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Presented by
(facilitator name)

2. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Summary of Chapter 6
Establishing your progress reporting system
Applying graphical reporting tools
Deciding on reporting level of detail
Managing project status meetings
Managing scope change
Managing problem escalation
Explain how each of these contributes to the growing importance of project management in the business world.

3. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Tools, Templates & Processes Used to Monitor & Control
Current period reports
Cumulative reports
Exception reports
Stoplight reports
Variance reports
Gantt charts
Burn charts
Milestone trend charts
Earned value analysis
Integrated milestone trend charts and earned value analysis
Project status meetings
Problem escalation strategies

4. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
How to Keep a Project on Schedule
Hold daily team meetings
Complete tasks ASAP
Report problems ASAP
Don’t fall victim to the “creeps”
Don’t guess – ask questions
Good enough is good enough
Meet but do not exceed requirements
Be open and honest with your team mates

5. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Characteristics of Effective Progress Reporting
Timely, complete, accurate and intuitive
Doesn’t add so much overhead time as to be counterproductive
Readily acceptable to senior management
Readily acceptable to the project team
An effective early warning system
Is easily understood by those who have a need to know

6. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Five Types of Project Status Reports
Current period reports
Cumulative reports
Exception reports
Stoplight reports
Variance reports

7. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Exception Report – Stoplight Reports

8. Variance Reports The report has the following three columns:
The planned number
The actual number
The difference, or variance, between the two

9. Five reasons why you should measure duration and cost variances:
Catch deviations from the curve early. The cumulative actual cost or actual duration can be plotted against the planned cumulative cost or cumulative duration. As these two curves begin to display a variance from one another, the project manager should put corrective measures in place to bring the two curves together.
Dampen oscillation. Planned versus actual performance should display a similar pattern over time. Variance reports can provide an early warning that such conditions are likely, giving the project manager an opportunity to correct the anomaly before it gets serious.

10. Five reasons why you should measure duration and cost variances:
Allow early corrective action.
Determine weekly schedule variance.
Determine weekly effort (person hours/day) variance:
The difference between the planned effort and actual effort has a direct impact on both planned cumulative cost and the schedule.
If the effort is less than planned, it may suggest potential schedule slippage if the person is not able to increase his or her effort on the activity in the following week.
Alternatively, if the weekly effort exceeded the plan and the progress was not proportionately the same, a cost overrun situation may be developing.

11. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
How and What Information to Update
Determine a set period of time and day of week
Report actual work accomplished during this period
Record historical and re-estimate remaining
Report start and finish dates
Record days of duration accomplished and remaining
Report resource effort spent and remaining
Report percent complete

12. Positive variances and negative variances.
Positive variances are deviations from the plan indicating that an ahead-of-schedule situation has occurred or that an actual cost was less than a planned cost.
Negative variances are deviations from the plan indicating that a behind-schedule situation has occurred or that an actual cost was greater than a planned cost.
In most cases, negative time variances affect project completion only when they are associated with critical-path activities or when the schedule slippage on noncritical-path activities exceeds the activity’s slack.

13. Applying Graphical Reporting Tools
Gantt Chart Project Status Report
Figure
06-01

14. Milestone Trend Charts
Milestones are significant events that you want to track in the life of the project.
These significant events are zero-duration activities
For example, a milestone event might be the approval of several different component designs.
The completion of this milestone event may be the predecessor of several build-type activities in the project plan.
They typically have finish-to-start (FS) relationships with the activities that are their predecessors and their successors.

15. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Cumulative Reports - Milestone Trend Charts
Successive slippages
A run up or down of four or more successive data points
The horizontal lines represent one, two, and three standard deviations above or below the forecasted milestone date.
Figure
06-02

16. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Cumulative Reports - Milestone Trend Charts
Radical change
A change of more than three standard deviations
Figure
06-03
There may be a data error. The situation requires further investigation.

17. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Cumulative Reports - Milestone Trend Charts
Successive runs
a permanent schedule shift.
Seven or more successive data points above or below the planned milestone date
Figure
06-04

18. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Cumulative Reports - Milestone Trend Charts
Schedule shift
The cause must be isolated and the appropriate corrective measures taken.
Two successive data points outside three standard deviations from the planned milestone date
Figure
06-05

19. Earned value analysis (EVA)
Earned value analysis (EVA) is used to measure project performance and by tradition, uses the dollar value of work as the metric.
As an alternative, resource person hours/day can be used.

20. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – The Standard S-Curve
Time
Progress
2/3 Time - 3/4 Progress
1/3 Time - 1/4 Progress
Figure
06-06
represents the baseline progress curve for the original project plan

21. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – The Aggressive Curve
No ramp up - no learning time
Time
Progress

22. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – The Curve to Avoid
About 30% of the work done
70% to 80% of the time gone by
Time
Progress

23. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – Cost Variance
Figure
06-07

24. Earned Value – Cost Variance
Activities that should have been done have not been, and thus the dollars or person hours/day that were planned to be expended are unused.

25. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – Schedule Variance
Figure
06-08

26. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
How to Measure Earned Value
Figure
06-09

27. How to Measure Earned Value
The left of the figure: The budgeted $500 value of the work is planned to be accomplished within 5 days. This is the planned value (PV).
The middle of the figure: the actual work that was done. you were able to complete only $300 of the scheduled work. This is the earned value (EV).
The right part of the figure: the actual schedule, you see the actual dollars that were spent to accomplish the three days’ work. This $400 is the actual cost (AC).

28. Variances
The PV, EV, and AC are used to compute and track two variances:
Schedule variance (SV): is the difference between the EV and the PV, which is –$200 (EV – PV) for this example. That is, the SV is the schedule difference between what was done and what was planned to be done, expressed in dollar or person hours/day equivalents.
Cost variance (CV): is the difference between the EV and the AC, which is $100 in this example. That is, (AC – EV) the cost of the work completed, was overspent by $100.

29. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – The Full Story
Schedule
Variance
Cost Variance PV AC EV
Time
Progress
Figure
06-10

30. Earned Value – PV, EV and AC curves
In addition to measuring and reporting history, EVA can be used to predict the future of a project.

31. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – PV, EV and AC curves
Figure
06-11

32. Ch06: Project Portfolio Management
Earned Value – Basic Performance Indices
Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
A measure of how close the project is to performing work as it was actually scheduled.
SPI = EV/PV
Cost Performance Index (CPI)
A measure of how close the project is to spending on the work performed to what was planned to have been spent.
CPI = EV/AC
INDEX VALUES
< 1: over budget or behind schedule
> 1: under budget or ahead of schedule

33. Ch06: Project Portfolio Management
Earned Value Example
Suppose you have a budgeted cost of a project at $900,000. The project is to be completed in 9 months. After a month, you have completed 10 % of the project at a total expense of $100,000. The planned completion should have been 15 %.
Now, let’s see how healthy the project by computing the CPI index and SPI index.
Solution
From the scenario, you can extract the following:
Planned total cost= $900,000
AC = $100,000

34. Ch06: Project Portfolio Management
Earned Value Example
The Planned Value (PV) and Earned Value (EV) can then be computed as follows:
Planned Value = Planned Completion (%)* planned cost = 15 % * $ 900,000 = $ 135,000
Earned Value = Actual Completion (%) * planned cost = 10 % * $ 900,000 = $ 90,000
Cost Performance Index (CPI index) = EV / AC = $90,000 / $100,000 = This means for every $1 spent, the project is producing only 90 cents in work.
Schedule Performance Index (SPI index) = EV / PV = $90,000 / $135,000 = This means for every estimated hour of work, the project team is completing only 0.67 hours (approximately 40 minutes).
Interpretation: Since both Cost Performance Index (CPI index) and Schedule Performance Index (SPI index) are less than 1, it means that the project is over-budget and behind schedule

35. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – Performance Indices
Project Week 8 7 6 5 4 9 3 2 1
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
1.2
1.4
1.6 C S
under budget
ahead of schedule
over budget
behind schedule
Project: ALPHA
Figure
06-12

36. Integrating Milestone Trend Data
The presentation of the SPI and CPI data over time can be represented using the same format that was used to report milestone trend data.
The project has gotten behind schedule (denoted by the ‘‘S’’ in the figure) but is under budget (denoted by the ‘‘C’’ in the figure).
That is probably due to the fact that work that was scheduled has not been done and hence the labor costs associated with those tasks have not been incurred.

37. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – Performance Indices
Project: ALPHA C S
under budget
ahead of schedule
over budget
behind schedule
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
1.2
1.4
1.6
Project Week 8 7 6 5 4 9 3 2 1
Figure
06-13

38. Integrating Milestone Trend Data
On rare occasions, you might experience the situation shown in Figure 6-13.
The project is ahead of schedule and under budget.
Less costly ways were found to complete the work, and the work was completed in less time than was planned.

39. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – Performance Indices
Project: ALPHA C S
under budget
ahead of schedule
over budget
behind schedule
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
1.2
1.4
1.6
Project Week 8 7 6 5 4 9 3 2 1
Figure
06-14
Figure 6-14 is the worst of the worst.

40. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Earned Value – Performance Indices
Portfolio: BETA Program
1.6
1.4
1.2
ahead of schedule
1.0
0.8
behind schedule
0.6
0.4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Figure
06-15
Project Week
Portfolio average

41. Integrating Milestone Trend Data
The graph (figure 6.15) shows the SPI values of the individual projects that comprise the portfolio.
This is also a useful graphic for summarizing the practice changes from your process improvement program.

42. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Managing the Scope Bank
Initial deposit of 10% of total labor days
All of the unfinished functions and features and the labor time to develop them are also deposited in the Scope Bank.
The time to process and integrate a Scope Change request draws time from the Scope Bank.
To add time to the Scope Bank remove unfinished functions and features and deposit their labor time in the Scope Bank.
Client should continuously reprioritize contents of the Scope Bank

43. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Maintaining the Issues Log
The Issues Log is a dynamic document that contains all of the problems that have arisen during the course of the project and have not yet been resolved.
ID Number
Date logged
Description of the problem
Impact if not resolved
The problem owner
Action to be taken
Status
Outcome

44. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Problem Escalation Strategies – Who Controls What?
Scope and Quality
Time
Cost
Resource Availability

45. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Problem Escalation Strategies
Project Manager-Based Strategies
No action required. Problem will self-correct (using available slack)
Schedule compression techniques (Examines FS dependencies )
Can some resources be reassigned from noncritical-path activities to assist with the problem activity?
Resource Manager-Based Strategies
Negotiate additional resources
Client-Based Strategies
Negotiate multiple release strategies
Request schedule extension

46. Ch06: How to Monitor & Control a Project
Escalation Strategy Hierarchy
No action required (schedule slack will correct the problem)
Examines FS dependencies for schedule compression opportunities
Reassign resources from non-critical path tasks to cover the slippage.
Negotiate additional resources
Negotiate multiple release strategies
Request schedule extension from the client

47. Gaining Approval to Close the Project
The client decides when the project can move to the Closing Phase.
This is not an arbitrary decision, but one based on the acceptance criteria initiated during project planning and maintained throughout the project.
The acceptance criteria are nothing more than a checklist that reflects the client requirements. After all of the items have been checked as satisfactorily completed, the project is ready to move to the closing activities