MONITORING THE PROJECT

A. Comparing project goals, strategies and outcomes predicted in the project development plan to actual progress and accomplished milestones.
B. Reviewing the risk analyses and risk management plan to determine if the actions taken to minimize risk are reasonable.
C. Comparing planned expenditures against actual expenditures.
D. Suggesting solutions and actions to the project staff to aid in making the project a success.
E. Ensuring project management controls are functioning, especially change control procedures and estimating procedures.
F. Ensuring project planning is complete and ongoing.
G. Review engineering analyses & scientific studies.

WHY MONITOR?

1. Pinpoint areas of high risk and failure points.
2. May aid in identifying potential problems before they manifest.
3. Identify lessons learned which can be applied to other projects.
4. Identify areas where quality targets are unmet, and costs are misaligned with the budget.
5. To know when to stop the project.

WHAT TO MONITOR?

• Program/project manager/team meetings (previous meetings transcripts) and conferences (normally occur weekly or bi-weekly).
• Executive briefings related to the project (normally monthly or quarterly).
• Interview project staff, relevant employees in business units, contractors/ advisers, customers (internal/external), project managers, investors, project champion/senior executives, .
• Validate the project management processes, change control processes, project tracking, and status reporting mechanisms.
• Review project status reports to compare with the project development/implementation plan to determine timeliness.
• Visit the project site(s) to determine project progress.
• Evaluating project expenditures, both staff time and other expenses and comparing expenditures with projections.
• Meet with internal auditor staff to review pertinent audit notes/recommendations.
• Analyzing the project development plan.
• Evaluating the quality of the deliverables being produced by the project staff.
• Reviewing the post-implementation evaluation to determine the success of the project.
• Relevant text messages/emails/ presentations/ videos
• Planning meetings
• Pre-launch briefings

HOW TO MONITOR

• Apply Earned Value Concepts – by integrating time, cost and scope measures for a true view of project performance.
• For Small & Medium Projects – Use informal Earned Value Measurement (EVM).
     – Cumulative task start/stop metrics
     – Project start & end metrics
     – Accumulated effort metrics
     – Project total cost budget
     – Project total cost to date
     – Percent of budget consumed to date
     – SOW quality metrics
     – Predictive of project outcomes after 20% of expenditure
• For Large Projects – Use Formal EVM: SPI, CPI, TCPI, BAC, VAC
     – Predictive of project outcomes after 20% of expenditure