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.Typical sources of change are scope, schedule, and budget adjustments.៑ It is crucial to keep the baseline plan current.៑ The six common steps you will take in a typical change control process are to enter the initial change control information into your change control log; determine if the change should be processed; submit recommendations to management and/or the customer for review and approval; update the project plan; distribute the updated plan; and monitor the change and track progress against the revised plan.៑ The change control form and log are your primary controlling documents.៑ Thresholds should be established when determining your response to project change.៑ Project spin-off usually occurs when the project change is so dramatic that you and your team determine that an entirely separate project should be initiated.Exercise.Identify a recent change to your project that required a response.On the basis of what you’ve learned in this chapter, answer the following questions:1.Is it appropriate to accept the change?2.Should a change control document be triggered?American Management Association • www.amanet.org140Fundamentals of Project Management3.How did this change impact the project triangle?4.To whom should the response be communicated?5.What change thresholds are appropriate to establish for this project?American Management Association • www.amanet.orgCHAPCHTER 11APProject Control UsingEarned Value Analysisontrol is exercised to achieve project objectives, and we know that there are performance, cost, time, and scope targets that are always important.Furthermore, we have seen C that control is exercised by comparing performance to plan and, when deviations or variances occur, taking corrective action to bring performance back on target.As I said in Chapter 9, the review that is concerned with maintenance or straightforward project control is the status review.This review asks where the project is in terms of all four PCTS variables.Each time progress is reviewed, you must ask these three questions:1.Where are we (in terms of PCTS)?2.When there is a deviation, what caused it?3.What should be done about the deviation?Note that there are only four actions that can be taken in response to question 3.These are:141American Management Association • www.amanet.org142Fundamentals of Project Management1.Cancel the project.2.Ignore the deviation.3.Take corrective action to get back onto the planned progress.4.Revise the plan to reflect a change in status that can’t be corrected.Sometimes a project gets so far off track that it is no longer viable, and the best thing to do is to cancel it.Of course, this step is not taken lightly, but it should be taken in cases where you are just going to throw good money after bad.Cut your losses and get on with something better.As for ignoring a deviation, if you can control to within a certain percentage tolerance and you are within those limits, you should usually ignore a deviation unless it shows a trend that will definitely eventually take it outside the limits.Otherwise, tweaking may just make the situation worse.As for taking corrective action, there is no way to tell what this means, as it is specific to each project.Sometimes working people overtime gets a project back on track.Or perhaps you need to add people, or cut scope, or change the process.You must determine what must be done for your project.In the event that the project is still viable but nothing can be done to get it back on track, you may have to revise the plan.Of course, you can also consider workingovertime or reducing scope, since theseAnother day,were not originally called for.What I amanother zero.really referring to here, however, is a sit-uation in which you cannot recover and—Alfalfa (Carl Switzer)you are revising the plan to show thatOur Gang comedy seriesthe costs will increase, the deadline willslip, or some other change to the plan will occur.Measuring ProgressOne of the hardest things to do in managing projects is to actually measure progress.When you are following a road map, you American Management Association • www.amanet.orgProject Control Using Earned Value Analysis 143monitor the road signs and see whether they agree with your planned route.In well-defined jobs, such as construction projects, it is generally fairly easy to tell where you are.You can measure the height of a brick wall or see whether all the conduit is in-stalled, and so on.That is, you can tell where you are when a part of the work is actually finished.When work is poorly defined and it is only partially complete, however, you have to estimate where you are.This is especially true of knowledge work—work done with one’s head, rather than one’s hands.If you are writing software code, designing something, or writing a book, it can be very hard to judge how far along you are and how much you have left to do.Naturally, if you can’t tell where you are, you can’t exercise control.And note that use of the word “estimate” in measuring progress.What exactly is an estimate?It’s a guess.And so we are guessing about where we are.Yes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]