Lesson 6: Managing Your Project: Part 2
Step 7: Monitoring
Just like steps 1 though 6, we could devote an entire series of courses to the monitoring step alone. This is because in this step you'll monitor all of the plans that are currently being executed to actually create the project.
Do you remember our discussion of baselines? Those were the snapshots of budgets and schedules, so that we could see if we were on time or on budget at any given point in the project. Well, this is where they come in really handy, because monitoring the project via baselines tells the Project Manager just where the project is at any moment in time, and just as importantly, where the heck it was supposed to be at any moment in time.
Based on the Lewis Method as well as insights from the PMBOK, we can see that monitoring requires a great deal of analytical skill and ability, because it is absolutely not enough to know that the project is ahead of schedule or behind schedule, or that a quality check on the an important project deliverable demonstrated that a process to create it was out of control. The project team must know why these things are happening.
The project team (led by you, the Project Manager) must know why things are happening the way they are because responses to these deviations from the various plans need to be developed. Perhaps a response will be to add more resources to the project and therefore increase the budget. Or perhaps a response will be to maintain the current spending level by moving resources to critical activities and completing the project on time, but with a smaller scope (think of creating the Love Boat on time, on budget, but without the Ledo Deck because you had to take resources away from that part of the project and put them towards creating lifeboats, a somewhat more critical component).
The Project Manager will not unilaterally make decisions about how the project will respond to these deviations. Rather, the Project Manager will get together with the team and brainstorm possible solutions. In some cases the Project Manager will be empowered by the senior project team to implement certain decisions without senior management signoff. These usually refer to the less dramatic changes. However, well-run projects that are responsibly run will embrace the involvement of senior project members to collaboratively decide on what direction the project should proceed, given a deviation.
References used in this section (these books are available for order via the Resources link above):
The Project Manager’s Desk Reference, by James P. Lewis. Chapter 2; Chapter 11.
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, by the Project Management Institute. Chapter 3.
