Project Management - Basics Methods Tasks: 4 steps for project control

To the expenses and Costs In order to control your project, in addition to the expenses already incurred, you also need an estimate of the remaining expenses for the completion of the work packages. The same applies to costs and deadlines.

Project management - from planning to implementation

Is the Planning Once your project is complete, your focus shifts Tasks. So far you have Projects planned, from now on your tasks are controlling the Implementation.

Implementation includes everyone Measures, the the Objective have to compare the actual course of the project with the original plan. As a project manager, it is your job to act proactively and not react. In this way, you actively influence the project and control your project.

Important for a new project management is the awareness that it is normal that there are changes and deviations from the original planning. No plan can be worked out exactly as it was conceived.

Adjustments are the rule

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The project has the effect of creating something new, and therefore adjustments to the project planning during the project control phase are not the exception, but the rule.

Therefore, communicate to all project participants at an early stage that changes and deviations from the plan are normal in the implementation, and make the changes transparent and comprehensible to all involved.

Compare planning and reality

And ensure the changes with appropriate decisions. Because if you simply enter a change into your planning, so you always update your project plan without making a comparison to the original planning, your project will always be on schedule. They are then not in a position to detect deviations.

This is precisely the reason for the project management: to identify deviations and to analyze the influence for the further development of the project, in order to then develop appropriate measures in order to remain relatively close to agreed dates and the approved project budget.

What does active project control mean?

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An indication of active project control is when the project manager spends a lot of time taking necessary corrective measures and implementing them together with his project team in order to react to deviations. The aim of project management is therefore to set up an early warning system that you as the project manager can and at an early stage clear shows when a reaction to deviations from the plan is necessary.

Project control consists of cyclical, repetitive steps. They regularly record the actual status based on the processing of the individual work packages.

Is the current state still true?

You then analyze whether the actual state matches your original planning. You can thus determine whether the current situation will have an impact on the further project progress.

Once it has become clear that milestones have to be postponed or even the achievement of the project objective is in danger, take measures to get the project back on track. If that is no longer possible, adjust your planning. The adaptation of your planning usually requires approval by the project owner, because the adaptation has an impact on deadlines, costs and effort.

Note deadlines, effort and costs

For the project control, first and foremost dates, costs and costs have to be considered. In many Companys Project costs are documented as part of an expense assessment - often weekly. This gives you the opportunity to evaluate historical data. For example, you can determine if the planned work package cost is exhausted, even though the work package result is not completed.

Or whether more efforts were made to work the work package than planned. Now you can re-estimate the remaining expenses of the work package by the responsible employee. In any case, the work package will be more expensive than you have planned in your project planning. The actual data alone do not provide you with any control options for your project.

How do you manage a project?

Use the estimated remaining expenses, costs, and the currently scheduled dates for updating the project plan. Without the question of the prospective further development of the project, an active control of a project is not possible.

In addition, not every company captures the overhead of project work. In this case, you only have the opportunity to directly and regularly ask your project staff about the remaining effort for their work packages. A complete tracking of project costs and costs is hardly possible in such a situation.

Target / actual comparison

A target / actual comparison is the best known and most widely used instrument of project control. The figures for the original planning (= target) and the current costs or costs are then compared. The deviations are thus transparent; the effects on the further course of the project can be estimated.

A target / actual comparison can be created for appointments, expenses or costs. The inclusion of the future-oriented data, ie estimated estimated remaining costs, estimated residual costs and deadlines, is important for the meaningfulness of the target / actual comparison.

If you regularly create a target / actual comparison, you receive an updated planning that contains actual data - and therefore has a higher planning quality than the original planning of the project.

Determination of the degree of completion

An interesting key figure for project management is the so-called degree of completion. The degree of completion describes how far a task has progressed. It can affect both the time and the duration of a task or the Performance, i.e. the effort of a task.

However, the degree of completion is often not directly measurable and is therefore valued by project staff. If you ask the question "What percentage are you finished with the work package?", You will often get the answer: "90 percent." That sounds good at first.

The 90 percent syndrome

But here you should be suspicious. Because the conclusion that only 10 percent to be done is usually wrong. This psychological effect is also called the 90-percent syndrome.

Because the apparently exact specification of 90 percent is only intended to express that there is very little work to be done. Ask You are therefore better off according to the amount of effort that still has to be made to complete the work package and how long it will take.

4 Steps for project control

The following measures for project control in case of delay are possible:

1. They shorten the duration of the work by overtime or changing the prioritization within the project.
2. You increase the efficiency of your work if you use an experienced expert to work out the work package.
3. They reduce the scope of work packages.
4. They parallelize the processing of work packages and postpone dates.

Reduce the scope of the project

If the costs or expenses are exceeded, you can only reduce the scope of the project. The following must be considered for all measures: How high are the costs? How much additional time is required? What effects do the measures have on deadlines, the project budget and the quality of the project result? For the selection the best measure there is no prescription.

Here are costs and Effect to be weighed against each other on a case-by-case basis. Plan deviations currently identified from the project must be documented regularly in the project plan in order to be able to identify the effects in terms of time, resources and project goal achievement at an early stage.

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