Step 06: Project Control Procedures

Description

Objective

 

To

 

            -  ensure that all procedures required to carry out and control project work are established,

 

In a way that

 

            -  identifies all necessary procedures,

 

            -  defines appropriate standards,

 

            -  defines necessary performance levels and tolerances,

 

So that

 

            -  all project work is carried out as effectively as possible.

 

Overview

 

There should be clearly established control procedures for any piece of work.  A Project is not an exception to this rule, but due to the nature of projects, these procedures are often not readily available.  It is therefore necessary to identify what procedures are required and to define these procedures.

 

Any established project control procedures that an organization has in place should be incorporated into the project plan.  Procedures to consider are:

 

            -  Quality Control

 

            -  Progress Control

 

            -  Change Control

 

            -  Version Control

 

            -  Issue Resolution

 

Any existing procedures should be modified if necessary for the project.  Additional procedures may be required, depending on the nature of the project.

 

The project and stage schedules need to incorporate project control tasks, and may need to be updated as a result of defining the control procedures. 

Step 06:         Project Control Procedures

Task .010          Set Up Project Administration

Create an electronic file structure to consistently maintain the administration of plans, progress, status reports, change control and issue management.

Task .020          Establish Quality Control Procedure

Determine the mechanisms to be used to ensure the quality of products produced during the project.

 

Task products may be subject to informal peer review.  These task products should be small and the peer reviews frequent, since defects can be quickly identified and corrected with minimal rework.

 

Step products will be subject to formal review, with defects being recorded and assigned for correction.

 

Specify for each product the Co-ordinators and Key Resources who will perform the quality reviews.

 

See the "Quality Control" process for more details.

Task .030          Establish Progress Control Procedures

Set up the infrastructure to facilitate:

 

            -  capture of actual effort and re-estimated effort to complete,

 

            -  weekly status meetings to discuss achievements, forthcoming work, and issues,

 

            -  production of weekly status reports.

 

See "Progress Control" process for more details.

Task .040          Establish Project Control Factors

Determine the project Control Factors.

 

It is important to agree in advance with the Project Board the "elasticity" of the project, so that the suitable controls are applied in response to deviations from the plan.

 

The Project Dimensions are:

 

            -  Cost: the total cost of personnel and non-personnel resources,

 

            -  Schedule: the stage end dates,

 

            -  Performance: the quantity and quality of products.

 

They can be controlled by the following Management Directives:

 

            -  Maximize: the project dimension which will be most tightly controlled, with the least permitted deviation, to achieve project success,

 

            -  Constraint: the next most important dimension which will be optimized within the constraints of the first,

 

            -  Accept: the dimension whose performance (or lack of) will have to be accepted to achieve the first and second.

 

A directive can be assigned to only one project dimension.

 

Example 1: to meet the schedule end date, while constraining costs, we will accept a lower quality product.

 

Example 2: to achieve a high quality product, while constraining costs, we will accept a later finish date.

 

Quantify the tolerances with respect to schedule, cost and quality before the Project Board is automatically alerted.

Task .050          Establish Change Control Procedures

Identify the need for change control on the project.

 

A change request may require rework to both completed products and those under development, as well as future tasks.  If it is not controlled then it will impact the project schedule and costs, and quality of the final product. 

 

Define the levels of change control to be used to control changes to each type of product for this stage.

 

Create a Change Control Log.

 

See "Change Control" process for more details.

Task .060          Establish Issue Resolution Procedure

Create the Issue Log.

 

See "Issue Resolution" process for more details.

Task .070          Review Project Control Procedures

Conduct a review to ensure that the standard Project Controls are in place.