Balance in Control System in Project Management

The Monitoring and controlling process oversee all the tasks and metrics necessary to ensure that the approved and authorized project is within scope, on time, and on the budget so that the project can proceed with minimal risk. This process involves comparing actual performance with planned performance and taking corrective action to yield the desired outcome when significant differences exist. Monitoring and the Controlling process is continuously performed throughout the life of the project. Project managers typically have more time and techniques to break down activities to understand all the associated costs to derive a more accurate work activity cost and project budget. They can also solicit the use of resources from outside the organization to complete project activities if internal resources are simply not available.

Organizations that do not have project management capabilities will eventually struggle with the accomplishment of projects in defining project costs, preparation resources, and scheming project work activities. But this whole controlling process should be balanced. Because an imbalance control system can be the cause of the failure of the project. Over or understated performance variable cannot be fruitful in controlling. So there should have balance in the control system.

Project controls are all-encompassing for project definition, planning, execution, and completion; assisting in the entire lifecycle of your project. As we said before, the use of controls will vary according to individual project demands, but project controls address, organize, and of course control the following aspects of your project management system:

• Developing your project strategy; defining methods that will enhance the future PM software use and project outcomes.
• Development, updates, and maintenance scheduling for the PM software.
• Estimating project costs; engineering and controlling costs and assessing project value.
• Managing risks; assessing and analyzing project risks, and cataloging past risks and how to avoid future risks.
• Earned schedule and earned value management, including both work and organizational breakdown structures.
• Controlling project documentation.
• Diagnosing project scheduling and costs with forensic assessment procedures.
• Oversight and quality assessment of supplied materials.
• Comprehensive integration of the elements of control and other domains of project management.

Steps to follow:

Setting smart, effective project controls begins well before the execution stage of your project. Monitoring and control go hand in hand with each other for every stage of your project. Controls and monitoring should be solidified by using each of the following steps:

1. Determining the scope of the project; explaining and communicating every aspect of the project to all members of the team.
2. Team structure and assigning tasks; determining who is best suited for each required task, how many members are assigned to each team, and planning on how to monitor progress.
3. Predetermined risk factors; knowing which risks are worth taking, and which are guaranteed to sabotage project success. Setting a risk management plan to mitigate risks before they can become real project threats will save you a boundless amount of pain when risks are managed.
4. Adaptability contingencies; both internal and external factors can demand that a project must change its course. Plan for the unexpected, but possible factors that would demand change to your project process, and set contingencies to adapt to change.
5. Monitoring of project status; set a schedule and determine a method (i.e. whether in person regular meetings, or the submission of written reports) for monitoring how well or poorly your project is progressing. Also, if the project is moving along ahead of schedule, investigate and find what is facilitating the rapid progress. Apply the factors to future projects. The same rings true in the opposite scenario, when your status is behind schedule. You will then know what to monitor for and avoid in future projects, saving valued time and money.
6. Plans for effective communication; obviously your lines of communication should be efficient and transparent, but pay equal care to your plans for communicating with both customers and project stakeholders alike.
7. Deadlines and budgeting; set in place a plan for establishing the initial project costs, keeping track of changes to the budget by regular communication with the accounting department, and ensuring that deadlines are met. Also, develop a contingency plan for if and when a deadline is not met, how to avoid future deadline failures.
8. Analysis/evaluation; set a system for evaluating and analyzing how well each element of the project planning and execution is contributing to the overall project success within the scope of the project. Is anything missing? Do you need to allocate more resources or reassign personnel? A system should be in place to solve questions (and all others) like these during both execution and planning.
9. Corrective contingencies; following step 8, if there are indicators that corrections should be made to the project or, that you discovered that some of your bases are not covered, plan not only for a system to implement changes, but also for contingencies in case the corrections also include their own set of complications. You cannot predict the future, but you can imagine it and set plans to do your best to control the future.
10. Planning for project presentation; determine the people that will be responsible for presenting the final product, the required supplies if any, and whom to present to. Also, plan for how to address handling status.