MONITORING AND CONTROL STAGE (INTEGRATION) : MONITOR AND CONTROL PROJECT WORK

This is the process of tracking, reviewing and reporting the progress of the project in order to understand the current state of the project, the steps taken, budget, schedule and scope forecast as well as to meet the objectives as defined in the project management plan.

Monitoring is a continuous activity that includes collecting, measuring, distributing information and assessing trend to identify areas that require more attention. Control is an activity that determines whether there is a need for applying corrective action, preventive action or replanning and makes a follow-up determining if the raised issues have been resolved with the action taken.

In short, Monitoring and control project work is about comparing the actual project performance against the project management plan

The inputs of the process are:

• Project management plan that describes all the subsidiary plans and baselines for the project.
• Schedule forecast that determines if the project is still within defined tolerance range according to schedule baseline and identifies any necessary change requests
• Cost forecast that determines if the project is still within defined tolerance range according to cost baseline and identifies any necessary change requests
• Validated changes that help to confirm if the changes were really implemented
• Work performance information that helps in making project decisions appropriately
• Enterprise Environmental Factors that influence the process such as standards, code of conduct, regulations, stakeholders risk tolerances, project management information systems etc
• Organizational Process Assets that may also influence the process such as control procedures, communication requirements, databases etc

The process can be done by:

• Using experts who can interpret project information to determine the actions required so that the project expectation is met.
• Analyzing the outcomes basing on the project variables. The analytical techniques can be regression analysis, variance analysis, trend analysis, root cause analysis etc
• Meeting with project team and stakeholders of the project

The outputs are Change requests if there is a need to apply preventive action, corrective action or defect repair in order to expand, adjust or reduce project or product scope, costs and schedule baselines as well as quality requirements; Work performance reports that document all the information of project performance in order to generate project decisions, actions or awareness in form of memos, recommendations, updates, information notes or status reports; and Updates in project management plan because of the approved changes may affect the overall plans and baselines, as well as project documents like work performance reports and issue logs

References:

PMI (2013). A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide 5^th Ed.) USA, Project Management Institute

http://pmlogy.com/glossary/group/monitoring-and-controlling/