Understanding & controlling the project Production Process

Lecture content Understanding the project plan – Who should write the plan? Control – Quality – Time & cost – Environment Project Failure

Recap on last week Managing resources – Identifying resources – Resource constraints – Resource levelling (also called smoothing) The ‘Mythical Man Month’

Understanding the project Project Plan Executive summary Project objectives Assumptions & risks Project Milestones WBS Network diagram Resource details Budget details Operating procedures Assessment & Review standards Contact Points Project approvals

Who should write the plan? On your own? Advantages – Speed – Know what you’re doing before forming team On your own? Disadvantages – Error identification – Missing/incomplete tasks – Objectivity – Complexity – Negativity

Who should write the plan? II Team? Advantages – Responsibility – Understanding – Conflict identification – cohesion Team? Disadvantages – Time consuming – Differing expertise – Conflict – preplanning

Project control cycle (Hughes p172) Publish revised plan Take remedial action End Start Publish initial plan Gather Project info Compare progress v. targets Satisfactory ? Project Completed ? yes No

Control of major constraints Quality (Time & cost) Environmental

Time control Various methods – Gantt charts – Slip charts – Ball charts – Timeline

Slip Charts Slip charts capture when a schedule slips and by how much. They plot expected completion date (Y) against calendar dates (X) Why? Project Completion Prediction: They allow for better prediction of schedule through slip trending and problem diagnostic. Scheduling: slip charts of previous projects can be used to prevent slips in future projects through post mortems, learning cycles, process reengineering

Example Slip Chart

Cost control Cumulative expenditure chart – Simple way to show expected v. actual cost – Not really useful unless you are using to predict forward costs – See page 182 of Hughes for example

Cost control II Earned value – Needs 3 measures Actual cost of work performed (ACWP) Budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) – Cost variance = ACWP-BCWP

Cost control III Estimated cost at completion – Cost variance is incidental ECAC = total budget + cost variance – Cost variance is indicative ECAC = project budget x Performance index (performance index = ACWP/BCWP)

Cost control exercise ACWP = 120k BCWP = 100k Total Budget = 200k What is the ECAC if the cost variance is believed to be – Incidental? – Indicative?

Cost control Answer Cost variance – actual cwp - budget cwp – = 20k ECAC incidental – total budget + cost variance – =220 ECAC indicative – total budget x performance index – total budget x (ACWP/BCWP) – 200 x (120/110) – 200 x 1.2 = 240

Environmental constraints Need to be aware of any environmental impact of what you are doing & perform accordingly Effect of legislation

Reasons for failure Resources Time Expectations Scope misunderstood Disagreement among stakeholders