Project Launch Process L190

Blog: Biz-Performance, David Brown

L190 – Implement / Re-implement Project Management and Control

DEFINITION

Implement or re-implement the defined project management and control procedures to be used during the following project segment.

SUMMARY

Project management, control, tracking and administration procedures should have been defined during the Project Launch – see Process L040 – Define and Agree Project Management Techniques. These procedures should be started up as soon as people are involved in project work. The procedures must be ready and operational on day one or they may not work.

PATH PLANNING GUIDANCE

This process is optional. It is normal practice in projects involving several people.

DEPENDENCIES

Prerequisites (Finish-Finish):

Define and Agree Project Management Techniques (L040)
Segment Plan (L120)
Agreed project organisation and roles (L130)

Dependent procedures (Finish-Finish):

Following segment processes and Quality Audit

RECEIVABLES

Quality Plan (includes defined Project Management and Control techniques)
Segment Plan – ie detailed plan for the segment
Project Organigramme

DELIVERABLES

operational project management and control procedures

TOOLS

• KPMG ITPM methodology

• KPMG Programme Management methodology

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF TASKS

The need for effective management and control

Effective project management, control and tracking is important in any undertaking where there is too much happening for all participants to be aware of everything that is going on. In effect, this is most siips projects. There are several reasons why such issues particularly affect siips projects, for example:

to exploit the package-focused approach many more activities go on in parallel
the project team is normally comprised of people with mixed backgrounds
there are normally user staff in the team who may be unfamiliar with IT project work
there is often some reliance on part-time staff
there is a need to coordinate people and activities both within the team and usually in several other parts of the client organisation
the work is often unfamiliar territory for all client organisation staff whether from user or IT backgrounds.

This leads to needs for:

good detailed planning to schedule staff efficiently and to ensure that dependencies are allowed for
effective management and control of the participants to ensure that they perform their tasks correctly
accurate progress tracking to ensure that the project manager has the information required to understand the state of progress with all the individual parallel aspects of the project, and the dependencies between them, such that effective command can be exercised and corrective actions can be taken where necessary.

Instigating the procedures

Appropriate procedures to address these issues should normally have been defined and agreed during the project launch (see Process L040). As the team who will perform the segment arrive and receive their initial briefings and tasks, they should be made aware of these procedures and the importance of following them. If the team start at the same time, it may be appropriate to hold a start-up meeting or workshop to explain the procedures.

They must also be given the information and tools they need to follow the defined procedures, for example, they might require:

overall segment plan
individual task lists extracted from the segment plan
timesheet forms
project calendar or reporting dates
issues control forms
change control forms
details of quality methods and techniques (as defined in the Quality Plan)

It is important that these materials and methods are put into use immediately. If they are considered to be of lower priority and applied retrospectively it can be extremely difficult to collect the old information and the team may be reluctant to catch up and to use the procedures. The project should start under control if it is intended that it should remain under control.