Task: Monitor and Control Project
Conduct periodic meetings with the team in order to assess the project status and identify any blocking issues. Identify and manage exceptions, problems and risks. Communicate project status.
Discipline:  Project Management
Purpose

To meet with the team in order to understand what team members have done, what they plan to do next, and if they have identified any impediment for their work to continue. Tracking status periodically and identifying blocking issues early is key to keep project on track.

Relationships
RolesPrimary Performer: Additional Performers:
InputsMandatory: Optional:
  • None
Outputs
Steps
Conduct regular meetings

Project manager tracks project progress to be able to react as soon as possible to any change, and to communicate the status to the project team and to the stakeholders.

Capturing project status

The project manager needs to frequently monitor the project to ensure its appropriate progress.

The method used to determine the project status depends on the project manager's management style and the project itself.

For example, on a relatively informal project, the project manager can monitor the progress through quick, daily meetings with the project team. Those meetings are also called "scrum meetings." See [SCH04] for guidance on scrum meetings. The project manager can use tools or procedures to automatically capture measures to help track the project's progress

Communicating status

Communicating project status is as important as gathering it. Communication is usually done at two levels: the project team and the stakeholders.

  • To the project team: status can be communicated through quick, daily meetings. A common practice is to communicate to-date status in the meeting when there is a daily status update.
  • To the stakeholders: status is usually communicated through core metrics rather than detailed information. This can be done through meetings, e-mail, or Web publishing.
Derive metrics

The basic metric is to compare actual effort spent with planned effort. A trend chart, such as a "burn-down" chart, can be useful (see [SCH04] for guidance on burn-down charts). See also Concept: Metrics and Guideline: Types of Metrics for more information.

Handle exceptions and problems

One of the project manager's key tasks is to know about the project team's problems and issues. The manager needs to focus on problems that are blocking progress. A quick, daily meeting is usually a good way to monitor those problems and issues.

Identify the cause and impact of problems and exceptions as they arise. Identify possible solutions for problems that have an immediate impact on the short-term goals and objectives and identify who needs to be involved in that implenting the solution. Then, define the corrective actions and implement them.

Determine the corrective actions to be performed. If the problem resolution is outside your control, you may need to communicate with other stakeholders to ensure that they are aware of the problem and work with them to find the best solution. If the problem resolution is under your control, identify tasks needed to implement it and integrate them into the plans. If it is critical to solve the problem during the current iteration, revise the iteration plan and, as necessary, reduce the emphasis on less critical tasks.

Identify and manage risks

Identify risks

Identify risks as soon as the project starts and continue identifying risks throughout the project. A common mistake is to identify risks only at the beginning of the project and then only track the status of these initial risks. The risk list should be revisited once per iteration or even weekly to add any newly discovered risk.

Consider recording the following information (see Concept: Risk and Guideline: Risk List - Informal Representation for more details):

  • Risk Description
  • Risk Type
  • Risk Probability
  • Risk Impact

Prioritize risks

A good approach for prioritizing risks is to have an attribute called risk magnitude, a combination of the risk probability and the risk impact. The table below gives an example on how to calculate the risk magnitude



Impact

Probability

High


Medium


Low


High High High Medium
Medium High Medium Low
Low Medium Low Low



Define mitigation strategy and follow-up risks

Once you have chosen a set of risks to focus on, choose a mitigation strategy. For more details on the different strategies, look at Concept: Risk Management.

Then, identify and assign tasks to apply the strategy to the given risk.

The project manager should follow up regularly on risk-mitigation actions. Try another strategy if your chosen strategy does not reduce the magnitude of a risk.

Reprioritize work as needed
More Information