Skip to main content

Monitor and Control project

Monitoring and Controlling is the largest and continuous part of the project management.

It keeps eye on everything that’s happing in/out of the project and adjusts as needed.  

A good project manager is constantly monitoring every single thing happing in the project. If you find the problem latter it’s hard and more expensive to solve it.

The below practices need to be followed by a project manager for an effective monitor and control of the project:

Project meetings:

Conduct the project meeting on daily (daily scrum) or weekly basis without fail and ensure that all the team members joins.

If the team is not co-located use the audio conference/video conference. Make the meeting shot, come up with action items and send the Minutes of Meeting (MoM) at the end of the meeting.

Need to follow up with team to close the action items on the agreed target closure date. Discuss on the status/issues and provide help required for the team work on the tasks.

If possible use the online tools to track the action items to closure.

Individual attention to team:

Pay the individual attention to team members by asking the status/problem facing/concerns/help needed. Make it informal, this will solve the communication gaps, team building and helps the project manager to bring the real picture of the status which is not captured in the project meetings.

Change Control Board Meeting:

Conduct the CCB meeting regularly to find the changes that really wanted to make for the project needs.

Decide the changes needed for the project in the CCB meeting.

Evaluate the technical, schedule, and cost impact of the change and make the decision with sponsor approval.

The changes needs to be tracked in Change Control Tracker with status of the change along with justification, impact if not implemented and others.

Collaborative contribution to issues/risks:

It’s very important that the issue and risks are updated on the daily or weekly basis and the necessary actions are taken to close the same.

Timely completion of time sheets:

The time sheets needs to be created by the project manager upfront and shared to the team. The team needs to fill the time sheet on daily basis. 

Need to ensure that the comments in the time sheet are provided properly and any deviations in the task need to be addressed and the future tasks needs to be changed to accommodate the deviations.

Project manger need to build the discipline to the team to enter the time sheet on daily basis or weekly basis.

Keep Eye on process checklist:

Keep the eye on the process checklist to make sure the process followed properly.

For example if you are running the weekly iteration in the agile project need to check the unit testing, code review and completed features are demoed on weekly basis.

Weekly status reports:

The project manager held with lot of work and it’s not sufficient to fill the template provided for the weekly status report.

The preparation of the week status report helps the project manger to think about what happened on this week, what gone wrong and right and find out the obstacles in the project.

Project Manager needs to re-plan the tasks planned ahead based on the weekly status.

Project Manger need to think on the scope, deliverables, dependencies, schedule and budget on every week and plan the actions accordingly.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New way of product development

Today is the era of fast-paced world and competitive world. Companies are realizing that the old sequential approach to developing new products won’t get the job done and product can’t be reached to market when compared to competitors. The 4 stages of product development are as follows – R&D, Growth, Maturation, and Decline. Instead of sequential approach, companies are using holistic approach – as in rugby game, the ball gets passed within the team as it moves as a unit up the field. This holistic approach has six characteristics: 1)     Build-in-instability 2)   Self-organizing project teams 3)   Overlapping development phases 4)   Multi-learning 5)   Subtle (very clear and strong) control 6)   Organizational change to explore and learning The above six characteristics forming a fast and flexible process for new product development with advantage of act as a change agent, creative, market driven ideas, flexi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Product Manager vs Product Owner

Both the product manager and the product owner work towards a common goal, to build and improve products that create meaningful value for customers and all stakeholders within the company. This usually happens by delivering and optimizing product features. Product Manager Product Owner The product manager discovers what users need, prioritizes what to build next, and rallies the team around a product roadmap. The product owner is responsible for maximizing the value of the product by creating and managing the product backlog. This person creates user stories for the development team and communicates the voice of the customer in the Scrum process.      Product Manager and Product Owner's work on below vacuum. Product manager focus on: Business Strategy Long term Product Vision Long term Product Strategy Product Roadmap Alignment with Product Owner Product owner focus on: Release Plan (Product Backlog ie: ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Delivering a project within budget

 Here are some tips for delivering a project within budget: Set a realistic budget Define the project's scope and necessary resources, and create a budget that's realistic. Cost estimate Segment the project into smaller tasks and milestones to plan how to use resources and provide clarity. Divide the project plan Break down the project into tasks to avoid late deliverables and over-budget projects. Monitor progress Regularly track the project's progress to identify and prevent cost overruns. Use progress reports to compare actual costs to the budget. Anticipate and revise changes Communicate with stakeholders to identify and assess risks, and assign owners to each risk. Consider different scenarios Estimation can be difficult for complex projects with many potential outcomes. Tracking: Tracking time spent on tasks, Tracking expenses per project, and Using project management software. Use Historical Data Your project is likely not the first to try and accomplish a specific o...
Post a Comment
Read more