Project Lessons Learned You were the project manager in charge of building a house in Ashburn, Virginia. The house was a five-bedroom home estimated to cost $1.2 million dollars and had to be complete

Project Monitoring and Control Process Plan

Project Monitoring and Control Process Plan

Despite the efforts of planning well, things may not go as planned hence some factors may derail the projects. Some risks that might affects the project are usually identified during planning and the project manager knows the percentage possibility of those risk incurring. The project manager invests a great deal of time in keeping track of and measuring projects progress and in identifying issues affecting those resolutions. The project monitoring and control involves reconciling projected performance state with planning documentation with the team actual performance. The project's manager observes projects performance through dashboard and Gantt chart to ascertain whether the projects are performing.

In this case, the project is expected to delays with two months and the cost to rise. The project manager keeps a close watch on the schedule of the projects, cost budgets, issues relating to the projects and risk identified. If the constraints are altered it means that the project might be delayed hence increasing extra cost. A well-designed dashboard is extremely useful and it greatly minimizes the time required to put the report together. The project manager is able to get real-time information about projects progresses through the dashboard. As well the projects can get real-time information through applying process monitoring which is conducted through checklist and guidelines. The checklist may help to identify the gap within the process and the progress is ranked based on the three colors.

The colors signify the project state. The green color indicates that activities implemented are as per the standard and guidelines, the amber color indicates that activity requires minor improvement and red indicates that the actors are not implemented as per the agreed standards and guidelines. The progress tracking is used to capture target against those output targets. The track sheet is required to outlines all output indicates for key activities. These activities keep the project manager well informed on project status and risk that might be faced by the projects. Through this information, the project manager would be able to know whether the projects will increase based on expected risk or changes in schedule.

For example, if the foundation and material procurements were to take one month and due to market changes in price the suppliers are reluctant to supply the material based on the quoted price because the firm would incur the loss. This process may affect the scheduled time hence increasing the time for the project completion. The foundation may be built in public sewage line a thing that was not projected hence making the firm incur more cost in shifting the sewage line. This cost may be added to the overall project cost hence affecting the projects achievements and schedule time. Therefore, to keep the project in-check is in order to reduce the cost of operation and in reducing the effects of projects progress on schedule, a project manager can control risk and minimize uncertainty.

If the schedule change is due to the procurement process, the project manager should have alternative suppliers who can supply material at lower cost and is reliable instead of taking more time while negotiating with suppliers to supply the material needed for construction or for finishing the house for example supply for paints, ceiling, and doors. The project manager can plan on inflation by allowing a range of cost in order to give room for changes in prices that might affect the project's cost and delay project achievement if the suppliers are not willing to supply at agree priced. The project manager can take proactive action of dealing with the issues when faced instead of waiting because the more he or she waits the more cost the project may incur.

The project's budget should include others cost such as legal issues cost and unexpected labor cost because labor cost cannot be fully determined upfront. The project schedule control activities target to bring the projects that are behind into alignment with the plan. The procedure includes crashing some task which adds some resources and fast-tracking. The activities are normally done in sequence and are now performed in parallel for part of their duration. For example, the activities that involve plumbing and rough electrical and hook up to water main may be done parallel to save time and cost of projects. The hookup and well drilling will take 51 days but if the activities are parallel done while finishing plumbing, the time the project will completed will not be affected because the activities are crashed and the cost will as well decline.

References

Team Clarizen,(Nov 3rd, 2017).The Importance of Cost Control in Project Management. Retrieved from https://www.clarizen.com/importance-cost-control-project-management/

Maserang, S. (2002). Project Management: Tools & Techniques. Retrieved November 15, 2013.