What Is Project Control?

Project control consists of the information systems and the management procedures that enable you to answer questions such as:

• Are we on track?

• Are we on budget?

• Are we on schedule?

• Are we delivering what we said we would?

• Are we meeting quality and performance standards?

• Are we meeting stakeholder expectations?

• What have we accomplished?

• Will the project objectives be met?

• What deviations/variances exist?

• What corrective actions are we taking?

• What caused these variances?

• What risks are we monitoring?

• What issues do we need to resolve?

• What lessons have we learned?

Project Management Institute (PMI) defines the controlling processes as those processes that ensure that project objectives are met by monitoring and measuring progress regularly to identify variances from the plan so that

corrective action can be taken, if necessary. Although accurate, this definition does not too clearly communicate all the aspects of project control that we need to understand, and it does not emphasize the most important aspect—prevention.

The Principles of Project Control

An easy way to remember what project control all is about is to think PDA. PDA stands for Prevention, Detection, and Action. Let’s take a closer look at these fundamental principles of project control:

Prevention—The best way to keep your project on track is to prevent (or at least minimize) variances from occurring. How do you do this? This takes your entire array of project management skills, but a few key activities include investing in planning, communicating effectively, monitoring risk factors continuously, resolving issues aggressively, and delegating work clearly.

Detection—Project control should provide early detection of variances. The sooner we can act on a variance, the more likely we are to get the success factor back on track. The key for early detection is to have the tracking systems and work processes in place that allow for the timely measurement of project results. Common examples of detection methods are performance reporting and review meetings. Two important concepts to note here are that to have a variance, you must be comparing actual results to a baseline of some type, and a variance can apply to any of the critical success factors, including stakeholder expectations and quality, not just schedule, cost, and scope.

Action—Although the prevention aspect has a strong action orientation too, this principle goes hand-in-hand with early detection. For project control to be effective, the detection of a variance must be able to trigger an appropriate and timely response. The three most common action types are corrective actions, change control procedures, and lessons learned. Often, as part of the planning for project control, specific variance thresholds are established that dictate what variances and corrective actions can be managed by the project team and what things need the immediate attention of senior level management.

Components of Project Control

To better clarify what is involved with project control, let’s review some of the key project management processes that are involved. To reiterate, project control involves more than just these processes. Your leadership, communication, interpersonal, analytical, and team management skills are equally, if not more, important to this endeavor.

Performance reporting—The process for measuring and communicating

project status to the targeted stakeholders. Information generally focused

on the performance of critical success factors against baseline targets, key

issues, corrective actions, and forecasted metrics.

Change control management—The process for reviewing, approving, and coordinating any request to alter the project scope schedule or budget.

Configuration management—The process for controlling changes, updates, and versions of project deliverables.

Issue management—The process for identifying, tracking, and resolving issues that could affect the project’s critical success factors.

Risk management—The process for identifying, monitoring, and responding to project risks.

Quality management—The process for ensuring that work processes and project deliverables meet quality expectations.

Procurement management—The controlling processes specifically used to manage any suppliers and vendors involved in the project.

Requirements management—The process to ensure all requirements are

identified correctly, documented, and tracked throughout the project. This

is an excellent scope and change control technique.

Without these fundamental management processes in place, as depicted in the figure shown below, you will have a much more challenging time.

Management Fundamentals for Project Control

As a project manager, there are a few management fundamentals to consider when establishing your project control system.

Focus on priorities—Understand what is important to the project and to the organization. Understand that whatever receives your focus will become important. Make sure there is alignment between the two.

Scale to project—The level of rigor and detail in your project control system should be consistent with the level of risk in the project. It should also be consistent with the project budget. In other words, projects with either low risk or small budgets should not be burdened with a project control system that is designed for larger, mission-critical projects.

Think “process”— You want to establish a natural system of control for the project; you want to plan it in advance. This applies to the project as a whole and to each individual team member’s contribution.

Expect changes—Project control does not mean prevent changes at all costs. Conversely, project changes should be expected, planned, and well managed.

Invest in thorough planning—The more energy spent in planning, the easier it is to control a project. If the project is defined properly, work is planned from the bottom-up, risks have been identified, stakeholders are in agreement on project objectives, and the project control system has been accounted for, then keeping the project on track should take much less effort.

Consider organizational culture—Depending on the level of project management maturity in your organization, you might need to consider a gradual implementation of project controlling procedures to achieve greater acceptance and effectiveness. Again, just make sure you focus on top priorities.

Set expectations—Remember to think “project control” in your project communications. Ensure that each team member understands what is expected from the project and from his individual role. In addition, make sure that the project team sees the discipline and priority that you place on

all project control procedures.

Be consistent—An important element to both effective project control and effective project communications is consistency. Project performance needs to be measured and reported on a consistent, regular basis. This approach is key for both early detection of variances and for establishing a culture of accountability to project assignments.

Pay attention early—Just to follow-up on the last point—make sure to pay close attention to your project early on. It has been observed that the outcome of a project was no better than its performance taken at the 15% completion point. Thus, if a project was behind schedule and/or over budget at the 15% completion point, it did not recover from this variance. The general consensus is that this happens for two key reasons: lax project controls in the early stages and poor estimating. If the estimates were off for the immediate work efforts, they are unlikely to be more accurate farther down the timeline.