The Principles of Project Control

An easy way to remember what project control is all 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—As with your own health, the secret to wellness is strengthening your immune system and minimizing contact with harmful agents. In other words, don’t get sick in the first place. The same principle applies to effective project control. 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. TipControlling project performance is all about PDA—Prevention, Detection, and Action. Tip“Lessons learned” are important resources for improving performance on the current project and on future projects.
• Detection—For this aspect of project control, think radar system or early warning system. 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, review meetings, and development methodologies that emphasize early and frequent product generation. 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. However, without these fundamental management processes in place, as depicted in Figure 10.1, you will have a much more challenging time.

• Performance reporting—The process for measuring and communicating project status to the targeted stakeholders. Information generally is focused on the performance of critical success factors against baseline targets, key issues, corrective actions, and forecasted metrics.FIGURE 10.1The project management processes involved with project control.
• Change control management—The process for reviewing, approving, and coordinating any request to alter the project scope, schedule, or budget. We address this in greater detail in “Managing Project Changes.”
• Configuration management—The process for controlling changes, updates, and versions of project deliverables. We discuss this in greater detail in “Managing Project Deliverables.”
• Issue management—The process for identifying, tracking, and resolving issues that could affect the project’s critical success factors. We address this in greater detail “Managing Project Issues.”
• Risk management—The process for identifying, monitoring, and responding to project risks. Important to know that a project is the most at risk, and most likely to change, at the beginning of the project.
• Quality management—The process for ensuring that work processes and project deliverables meet quality expectations. We address this in greater detail.
• 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 that is mentioned again later in this chapter.