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CHAPTER 2Planning and Controlling Projects

The purpose of the project should be clearly defined. The management of a project requires proper planning and control of a project’s completion time, budgetary resources, and desired results. Without proper planning and control, it is highly unlikely that the project will be completed within the deadline or with limited resources, or that the desired results will be achieved.

Key Questions to be Asked

In planning and controlling a project, the following questions should be asked:

Project Objective

►What are the desired results?

►What do we expect to achieve by undertaking this project?

►What problems are likely to be encountered?

►How will those problems be solved?

Time Considerations

►What is the magnitude of the project?

►Is it a large project or a small project?

►If it is a large project, how can it be divided into a series of shorter tasks?

►How long will it take to complete the project?

►What is the project’s deadline?

►What are the consequences of not meeting the deadline or postponing the deadline?

►For longer projects, when should each phase of the project be completed?

Financial Considerations

►What is the project’s budget?

►What are the major expense categories?

►Will capital expenditures be undertaken?

►How much of the budget should be allocated to planned expenses?

►How much of the budget should be allocated to unexpected expenses and contingency planning?

►What are the consequences of going over or under budget?

►What resources, including human resources, are needed to complete the project?

►What tools and methods will be used to ensure that the project is within budget?

Management

►What is my responsibility?

►Who will be on my project team?

►What is the responsibility of each team member?

►Who will manage and coordinate the various activities in a project and ensure that they are proceeding as planned and that the project will be completed before the deadline?

►Who will monitor that the project is proceeding as planned and within budget?

►How will deviations be identified and corrected for?

►Interim Analysis

►Are the intermediate results consistent with the final desired results?

►Is the project arriving at the desired results for each major step along its completion path?

►How will the pace be accelerated if your team falls behind schedule?

►How will costs be reduced if actual costs begin exceeding the budget?

►If problems are developing, what actions will be taken to correct them?

Final Report

►How will the results of the project be documented?

►What type of final report will be prepared and by whom? For whom?

To successfully complete the project, the project manager must have a clear understanding of the desired results and how these results will satisfy the needs of the end-user.

To successfully complete the project, the project manager must have a clear understanding of the answers to these questions and of how the desired results satisfy the needs of the end-user.

Project managers should assume a leadership position. Their aim should be not only to supervise but more importantly to coordinate the efforts of the team members. This often requires direct involvement in the major phases of the task so that the team works together, budgets do not show significant variances, schedules are kept, and deadlines are met.

A schedule of work should be prepared for outlining responsibilities. Everything should be written down. Checklists should be used to ensure that all team members know their responsibilities and deadlines. Team members sometimes work on several projects simultaneously. Under these conditions, there may be conflicts among priorities, especially if’ they are working under different project managers. To minimize such conflicts, team members should be asked to let project managers know in advance about scheduling conflicts. Team members may then be reassigned to different tasks.

Team members should be given detailed instructions, and participation should be encouraged from the beginning. Their input should be solicited. Let the members propose solutions and assist in implementation. Active participation will motivate the project team, and when the ideas are good, the entire project benefits.

Conducting the Initial Meeting

Before starting the project, the project manager should meet with the team to set a positive tone and define the project’s purpose. The meeting can help avoid misunderstandings and save time and effort later. It also clarifies the nature of the assignment, as well as the authority and responsibility of each individual.

Meetings should then be scheduled at regular intervals, but limited in time and frequency. If the project team spends all its time in meetings, not much else will be accomplished. At the same time, it is important to get together to review progress, resolve problems, and ensure adherence to budgets and schedules.

At the initial meeting, each team member should identify the problems he or she anticipates in working on the project. A list should of anticipated problems should be prepared and team members should generate solutions. If additional data is needed, a discussion should be started regarding who will research the data and from what sources. How will this information be verified? What if the data are inaccurate, obsolete, or misinterpreted? Be sure to consider how much time it will take to gather and check additional data or to conduct research.

A list of initial tasks should be prepared and assigned to appropriate individuals. Whenever possible, let the team members volunteer; they are likely to be more motivated if they define their own roles. The entire team should gain an understanding of the scope of the entire project at the initial meeting.

For all major phases of the project, prepare an initial schedule. For each phase, as well as for the overall project, establish the anticipated start and completion dates. Some phases, of course, may overlap. Subgroups of the team may be working independently and the work of one subgroup may not depend on the work of another subgroup. Nonlinearity in a project and its overlapping phases offer tremendous flexibility in scheduling activities.

While deadlines should be established in the initial schedule, maintaining flexibility is also important. It is highly unlikely that everything will happen according to schedule. Furthermore, as the team starts its work, the members will gain a better understanding of the problems, and the schedule and budget may have to be modified.

An initial financial budget should be prepared for each phase of the project. The initial budget should be prepared after considering human, financial, and information resources. For capital expenditures, consider both purchasing and leasing, as appropriate. Variance analysis should be conducted at the end of each phase by comparing the actual to budget Exhibits for costs, time, and productivity. This allows you to monitor actual expenditures and time, and to take corrective action, if necessary, to keep the project within budget.

Assembling the Project Team

The project team is a major determinant of the success or failure of a project. As the team increases in size, its diversity increases, managing the tasks becomes more difficult and complex, and the potential for conflict increases. There might be misunderstandings in communication. Different individuals have different motives and goals.

Team Assignment

As a project manager, you may or may not have control over the staff members assigned to the project team. If a team is being imposed, you should communicate with senior management and request that they allow your involvement in the selection process. For example, you could give them a list of individuals with whom you have worked successfully in the past. Emphasize the importance of having a cohesive project team and that such a team is critical to the project’s success.

Of course, sometimes it just is not possible to put together a team of your choice and you have to do the best with those you are given. These individuals may be perfectly capable of doing the job. Alternatively, they may have been assigned to this project simply because they were available. It is also possible that these individuals were assigned because of their interest or talent. In any event, you should give each individual a chance to do the best possible work, and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

It is important to inspire and motivate team members. Your aim should be to help team members understand how the success of the project will affect their individual success. It is common for individuals to place top priority on self-gain, so ensuring that team members anticipate personal success ensures their commitment to the project. You need to specifically identify the benefits to the team members to motivate them and to focus their energies on the project. An ideal team member understands the desired results and is committed to making it happen.

Job Assignment

It is generally best to break a large project into several phases and each phase into distinct tasks. Each team member should then be assigned the responsibility of executing one or more of those tasks, which should not be highly structured. To motivate team members, assign them the responsibility for a given job and let them approach it the way they believe is best. This, of course, does not mean that you should not supervise them or give them guidance. Coordinate the activities and make sure the team members understand the goals and aims of the task. However, by providing team members with responsibility for certain tasks, you give them an incentive to put in their best efforts. This also lets them know that you trust them and that you have confidence in their abilities.

Delegating Duties

If you are too assertive and too controlling, you may stifle the freedom of your project team and impede its creativity. An effective project manager knows how to delegate the work. You should not insist that the project be done your way. Your role should be to monitor the team’s work and coordinate its efforts, while watching the budget and the time schedule of each phase of the project. Of course, you should be available to help your team members, especially if they come to you with a problem.

Conflict Resolution

Conflicts sometimes develop among team members or groups of team members. For example, individuals may differ as to how to approach the project or solve a problem, or groups may compete for credit for some work. As the project manager, your aim is to resolve conflicts and to make sure these conflicts do not destroy the progress of the project. Emphasize to your team that the success of the project is more important than the success of any individual. Stress that everyone benefits from the project’s success and everyone loses from its failure.

Self-Directed Work Teams

The self-directed team structure is an alternate to the traditional team structure and has become very popular recently. A self-directed team is a group of well-trained workers with full responsibility for completing a well-defined segment of work. This segment of work may be the entire finished product or an intermediate part of the whole. Every member of the team shares equal responsibility for the entire segment of work. Conceptually, self-directed teams are the opposite of traditional teams that work in an assembly-line manner. In an assembly line, each worker assumes responsibility for only a narrow technical function. In self-directed teams, each worker is equally responsible for the entire segment. This, of course, requires that the team members receive extensive training in administrative, technical, and interpersonal skills to maintain a self-managing group. Self-directed teams have many more resources available to them compared with traditional teams.

Traditional teams assign a narrow function to each member. Since a large number of people contribute to the finished product, individual workers see little relationship between their efforts and the finished product. This often leads to apathy and alienation. All members in self-directed teams receive extensive cross-training, and they share in both the challenging as well as the routine activities for their segment of work.

Obtaining Senior Management Support

Obtaining the cooperation of senior management is essential. Senior management’s involvement and attitude toward projects differ from company to company and from person to person. Senior management might be very supportive of the project or may hardly care at all about it. Senior management’s attitudes may be classified as follows:

►“It is your project. You have to solve your own problems. I don’t want to be bothered until it is completed.”

►“I would be happy to work with you and resolve any problem you encounter.”

►“A Ithough I would like to help, there is nothing I can do. You will have to resolve this problem on your own.”

►“Keep me apprised of the situation and any problems you encounter. I want to be informed of everything.”

Regardless of senior management’s attitude, you should be prepared to complete the project without any help. Frequently, you will have no choice but to do the best you can with limited or available resources.

Developing a Feasible Budget

The budgeting process may be a source of confusion and frustration for many project managers. There may be a great deal of pressure to remain within the budget. A budget is simply an estimate of the sources and uses of cash and other resources. Since the budget is an estimate, it is unlikely that the final expenditures will be exactly equal to the budget.

Preparing the budget at a realistic level is important. Agreeing to an inadequate budget is unwise. While it may be convenient at the formation stage to reduce or minimize conflict, you and your project will ultimately suffer. You will be expected to explain unfavorable variances to senior management. Moreover, you will likely receive a very negative response when your project goes over budget.

The budget should always be developed by the project manager. It is unrealistic to work with an imposed budget. The project manager is generally in the best position to estimate what the project should cost and is therefore responsible for explaining any resulting variances. Accordingly, you should always insist on developing your own budget and should not settle for an inadequate budget simply to minimize conflict at the outset. Otherwise, both you and your project will suffer in the long run.

Project budgets are typically more difficult to prepare and adjust than departmental budgets. Projects typically consist of nonroutine activities. Departmental budgets are generally prepared annually and are often revised quarterly or semiannually. In contrast, project budgets are devised for the life of the project and are not related to a fiscal year. Revisions to project budgets are uncommon in the absence of a mistake in the original budget or a major change in the scope of the project. Unfavorable variances in a project are typically noticed more readily than unfavorable variances in a departmental budget. At the departmental level, variances are often accepted as being inevitable, but similar variances in a project are often frowned upon. In general, a project manager is typically held to a higher level of accountability than a department manager.

The major expense in most projects is likely to be for human resources. When estimating labor expense, consider both the labor hours and the skill levels needed to complete each phase of the project. Multiplying the hours by the labor rate at each level will give the total labor cost.

Also for each phase of the project, prepare a detailed budget listing the materials, supplies, and equipment requirements, which may vary widely. Some projects consist essentially of administrative tasks and do not require any special materials or supplies. Other projects may require considerable expenditures on property, plant, or equipment.

Fixed and variable overhead is another major category of expenses for most projects. Companies differ in how they allocate fixed overhead, but it is usually by a formula. Overhead may be allocated based on labor hours, labor cost, machine hours, square feet, etc. Variable overhead is allocated to the project like other project-specific expenses. In general, overhead is more likely to be allocated for longer-term projects. For shorter-term projects, senior management may decide not to allocate overhead expenses. It is essential to identify significant variances from budgeted amounts. Most companies require formal variance analysis at the end of the project. You should do a variance analysis at each phase of the project and take corrective action, if needed. If a phase is long, consider doing monthly variance analyses. All significant variances, whether favorable or unfavorable, should be investigated.

If actual expenses exceed budgeted expenses, investigate the cause. Budgets are closely tied to work schedules. Certain phases might be taking longer than estimated. You may have no choice but to demand more work from your team members. Also, your original assumptions and estimates might be wrong, or a significant change might have occurred in the scope of the project. You may need to request senior management to revise the project budget. It is sometimes possible to absorb unfavorable variances from one phase into the next phase. Your personal involvement in future phases of the project might also enhance productivity. You may also need to initiate budgetary controls to curb spending.

It is important to investigate all significant variances, not just the unfavorable ones. Sometimes expenses turn out to be less than budgeted. Examine why you are under budget. Is your team more productive than anticipated? Was there a significant decline in the price of materials, supplies, or equipment? Were your original estimates inaccurate? Is quality being sacrificed in any way to obtain cost savings? Do you expect to incur expenses in later phases that might wipe out any savings from the earlier stages?

Detailed Time-Schedule Preparation

Prepare a schedule for each phase of the project. You will be unable to complete your project on time without planning and controlling the time budget. Even a small delay in one phase of a project can have a significant effect on the overall completion time. Many tasks in a project are interdependent. A small isolated delay may not be a problem, however, when activities are interdependent, a small delay might throw off the entire schedule.

The schedule should be reasonable and realistic. Some projects are plagued by delays. If you have been unable to complete the initial phases on time, it is unlikely that you will complete the project on time. An effective project manager knows how to set up a realistic time budget and how to follow through on the budget. Time-management skills are essential characteristics of a good project manager.

When planning the initial schedule, budget a little slack. But keep in mind project deadlines are often imposed and you may have no choice but to work within the imposed guidelines. Sometimes a delay in one phase of the project simply has to be overcome in a later phase.

As the project manager, you are responsible for staying on schedule and meeting the deadline. It does not matter what caused the delay. You are personally responsible for controlling the activities, monitoring progress, anticipating problems, and taking corrective actions before delays cause you to miss the final project deadline.

Although your goal should be to meet the project deadline, it is unwise to let the quality of the project suffer. Your final results should be accurate and of high quality, even if it means requesting an extension. You should try, of course, to work faster, put in overtime, or modify your original plan in order to meet the deadline. Ultimately, if the trade-off is between meeting the deadline or doing quality work, the project’s quality should take top priority.

Project Scorecard

A project scorecard measures the characteristics of the deliverables produced by a project. It also measures the progress of the internal project processes that create those deliverables.

Exhibit 2 provides the types of metrics that could be reported. This list is not exhaustive by any means but may help provide additional ideas for you.

Exhibit 2: Project Scorecard Metrics

BALANCE CATEGORY	SAMPLE METRICS
Cost	Actual cost vs. budget (variance) for project, for phase, for activity, etc.
	Total support costs for x months after solution is completed
	Total labor costs vs. nonlabor (vs. budget)
	Total cost of employees vs. cost of contract vs. cost of consultant (vs. budget)
	Cost associated with building components for reuse
	Total cost per transaction
	Ideas for cost reductions implemented and cost savings realized
Effort	Actual effort vs. budget (variance)
	Amount of project manager time vs. overall effort hours
Duration	Actual duration vs. budget (variance)
Productivity	Effort hours per unit of work/function point
Difficult to	Work units/function points produced per effort hour
measure	Effort hours reduced from standard project processes
accurately unless function	Effort hours saved through reuse of previous deliverables, models, components, etc.
points are	Number of process improvement ideas implemented
counted	Number of hours/dollars saved from process improvements
Quality of deliverables	Percentage of deliverables going through quality reviews
	Percentage of deliverable reviews resulting in acceptance the first time
	Number of defects discovered after initial acceptance
	Percentage of deliverables that comply 100 percent with organization standards
	Percentage of deliverables that comply with organization architectural standards
	Number of customer change requests to revise scope
	Number of hours of rework to previously completed deliverables
	Number of best practices identified and applied on the project
	Number of successfully mitigated risks
Customer satisfaction with deliverables	Overall customer satisfaction (survey) with deliverables in terms of:ReliabilityMinimal defectsUsabilityResponse timeEase of useAvailabilityFlexibilityIntuitivenessSecurityMeets customer needsUnderstandableUser documentationApplication response time (calculated by the system)Number of approved business requirements satisfied by the project
Customer satisfaction with project team	Overall customer satisfaction (survey) with the project team in terms of:ResponsivenessCompetenceAccessibilityCourteousnessCommunication skillsCredibilityKnowledge of the customerReliability/following through on commitmentsProfessionalismTraining providedOverall customer satisfactionTurnaround time required to answer customer queries and problemsAverage time required to resolve issuesNumber of scope change requests satisfied within originalproject budget and duration
Business value	Overall customer satisfaction (survey) with deliverables in terms of:ReliabilityMinimal defectsUsabilityResponse timeEase of useAvailabilityFlexibilityIntuitivenessSecurityMeets customer needsUnderstandableUser documentationApplication response time (calculated by the system)Number of approved business requirements satisfied by the project

Terminating the Project

The fourth and final phase of the project life cycle is terminating the project. It starts after the project work has been completed and includes various actions to properly close out the project.

The purpose of properly terminating a project is to learn from the experience gained on the project in order to improve performance on future projects. Therefore, the activities associated with terminating the project should be identified and included in the project’s baseline plan—they should not be done merely as spontaneous afterthoughts. These activities might include organizing and filing project documents, receiving and making final payments, and conducting post-project evaluation meetings within both the contractor’s and the customer’s organization.

The termination phase starts when performance of the project is completed and the result is accepted by the customer. In some situations, this might be a somewhat formal event in which an automated system satisfies a set of criteria or passes tests that were stated in the contract. Other projects, such as a weekend of homecoming activities at a university, are completed merely with the passage of time.