Assignment 4 – Project Management

Project monitoring and control are very important for a company to proceed effectively.  They are incorporated in a project to ensure that challenge are identified and resolved early in the projected.  Monitoring is charged with the tole of identifying problems and difficulties.  It uses a series of mechanisms and methods (Patel, 2008).  Once a project is monitored, it is released depending with the nature of the problems it sought to discover.  Regular monitoring yields routine reports while those that are obtained after a situation that is out of the ordinary are either exception reports or special analysis reports.  Control is charged with the role of identifying real solutions to the problems in the company.  If the project contains changes, then the control process seeks to accommodate these changes into the project by allocating resources to them.

Monitoring and Information Systems

Project monitoring is an essential step of project management it involves analyzing project data and reporting on various aspects of project performance.  The main aspects of the a project that are monitored are time, cost and scope (Meredith & Mantel, 2012).  Time is monitored to ensure that the project does not run behind schedule.  The monitoring of cost seeks to ensure that the funds are not mismanaged.  Finally, scope monitoring seeks to ensure that the overall health of the project is as expected. 

Project monitoring involves various members of the company.The main participants of the monitoring process are the executive, the administration and the responsible engineer (Patel, 2008).  The monitoring process is however created in such a way as to ensure that the entire personnel is tied into it.  This will ensure that the process is thorough and that there are mechanisms for reporting issues that may arise in the course of the project. 

The project monitoring process is designed such that the primary factors of time, cost and scope are identified (Meredith & Mantel, 2012).  The information that is necessary for the monitoring process to be effective should clearly defined to ensure that all the necessary data is identified early enough, hence eliminating possibilities of lack of sufficient information when it is urgently required.

The reporting process is usually different at different levels.  Low level employees are required to provide detailed information to the monitoring personnel while high level employees provide overview reports (Patel, 2008).  The lower level personnel are also monitored more frequently than their higher level counterparts.  Monitoring reports are mostly used to facilitate control.  They should therefore be available on time and contain relevant data.

The reports are very important for various reasons.  They enable mutual understanding of the goals of the project.  They also enable those responsible understand how various tasks relate.  Reports also provide warnings about problems that may occur in the future or those that have begun occurring (Meredith & Mantel, 2012).  There are three types of reports.  Outline reports are issued on a regular basis as a company principle.  Exception reports are provided whenever abnormal situations arise.Finally, special analysis reports are created by special committees after unexpected problems occur in the course of the project.

Variances are generated for to assist in various aspects of the project.  An engineer responsible for a project must always ensure that the variances remain positive.  Otherwise, it may imply that the company is running of funds, running behind schedule or not performing well (Meredith & Mantel, 2012). 

Project management information systems (PMIS) have today become incorporated into almost every aspect of monitoring.  Initially, they only concentrated on staying on schedule, today they have also become capable of determining variances, earned variances and much more.  A good PMIS should always be friendly to the user.  It should also be capable of measuring as many attributes of the project as possible.  Graphical PMISs are also preferred.

Control

Project Control focuses on ensuring that the report’s findings are used.  On scope, control takes care of any issues of quality, technicalities, changes that may be required by the client, or any other aspects of scope that may be discovered in the course of monitoring.  Regarding cost, the company may require to justify a need for more resources after difficulties arise in the course of the project.  Here may also be changes in the project, hence leading to a need for more funds.  Sometimes there may also be a justification for adding time to the schedule.  This may be the a case for various reasons.  First, the company may determine that some difficulties that were encountered in the course of the project took too long to resolve.  The amount of time may also be increased if it is determined that some resources took too long to obtain, the orders were changed or the previous tasks had not been completed appropriately.   Overall, the control process seeks to alter the activities of the project to ensure that there are sufficient resources for the project to be completed.  It also ensures that company resources are not wasted (Meredith & Mantel, 2012).  The most important forms of control are physical asset control, human resource control and financial resource control.  There are three types of project control.  Cybernetic control involves a close monitoring of the project.  Those deviations that are spotted are resolved on the spot.  Go/No go controls are used to determine if certain preset condition have been met in the course of the project.  It is the most common type of control (Meredith & Mantel, 2012).  Phase gated control is a type of control that requires that projects be controlled at specific points of the project.  If a project fails to pass through a certain phase, then it is not funded.

Changes identified must always be accommodated in the plan must always be accommodated into the projected.  To enable this, there should always be a process of approval and a clause in the agreement that promotes the control of changes.

While a control system is important, it should also be balanced.  If not, the wrong factors may be monitored too closely at the expense of other more important ones.  Control of creativity is also an important factor.  If too much of it is done, then creativity may be stifled hence limiting productivity (Meredith & Mantel, 2012).  The secret is to ensure t hat the control of creativity places creative individuals in areas where they would be most productive.

Both monitoring and control are vital processes in a project.  Together, they seek to identify issues that are in the project and identify ways these issues could be resolved.  Any challenges in the process are resolved by the use of those mechanisms that are identified through the control process.  Technology has become incorporated into the monitoring process.  It plays various roles including computing certain data.  By so doing, it enhances the productivity of the monitoring teams.  Monitoring teams are always required to be accurate and timely.  The use of this technology enhances this capability.

References

Meredith, J., & Mantel, S.  (2012).  Project management: A Managerial Approach.  8^th Edition.  New York: Wiley.

Patel, V.  (2008).  Project management.  Jaipur, India: Oxford Book Co.