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What Should Be Monitored in a Project?

April 23, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Miscellaneous

What Should Be Monitored in a Project?
By Andrew Buck

The Project Manager should monitor every element of an initiative from the following perspectives:

  • Risk - proactively assess each risk; review and update an active register minimally on a bi-weekly basis.

  • Issues - anything that has emerged threatening overall progress to the project, or requiring corrective action.

  • Schedule progress - does the work match or vary from the schedule? Are there issues on activities that form a critical path and threaten a date? Do the initiative tasks require resource augmentation to complete deliverables within schedule? Where can tasks be reassigned or resources leveled to reduce team stress and bring tasks in on time (or preferably ahead of schedule, especially for those with an impact on the critical path of the initiative)?

  • External/Third-party/Vendor deliverables - this is a concern with any initiative, since the priority you have placed on your critical initiative may not match your vendor’s expectation. There are ways of mitigating these as risks. It’s advisable to maintain engagement with your vendors so that they feel a part of the team, and understand the importance of their deliverable - this will help drive their behavior, and empower them to address items that may hinder progress. In fact, you should treat anyone contributing to the initiative as a valued member of the team; consultants, vendors, and third parties are increasingly important. Viewing them as “hired help” will decrease their compliance and willingness to meet exceptional requests and demands.

  • Financial progress and financial demands - presuming you have control over the budget of the initiative, it’s your job to ensure that funding is spent in prudent manner, particularly if the result may breach the funding variances and further money is required to meet either a quality or date-driven deliverable. For instance, hiring a contractor to meet a date along the critical path could achieve the initiative objectives, but require additional funding. Your organization should provide guidelines on how this situation should be managed, but it should also be discussed candidly with your sponsor.

  • Morale - it seems obvious when listed here, but it’s the most neglected aspect of an initiative.

This is a slightly modified excerpt from Andrew Buck’s book, (Not) PMO-in-a-Can.

Andrew Buck, PMP, is the author of “(Not) PMO-in-a-Can: Pragmatic Management of Strategic Objectives (as told from the trenches)” (ISBN-13: 978-1449968229), available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other outlets, and online at http://www.pmoinacan.com. This and other thoughts around strategic project/program management can be found in his book.

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