1. Understanding & controlling the project Production Process

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

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

4. 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

5. 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

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

7. 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

8. Control of major constraints Quality (Time & cost) Environmental

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

10. 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

11. Example Slip Chart

12. 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

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

14. 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)

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

16. Cost control Answer Cost variance – actual cwp - budget cwp – 120-100 = 20k ECAC incidental – total budget + cost variance – 200+20=220 ECAC indicative – total budget x performance index – total budget x (ACWP/BCWP) – 200 x (120/110) – 200 x 1.2 = 240

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

18. Reasons for failure Resources Time Expectations Scope misunderstood Disagreement among stakeholders