Part 7 of 10-The Book that Most Impacted My Career-Excellence in Engineering

 

This blog will cover sections of Excellence In Engineering by W.H. Roadstrum, 1967, and relate them to Project Management Institute’s Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK).

In Chapter 4 of Excellence In Engineering, Roadstrum covers Scheduling, Monitoring and Controlling processes and practices project work.    While Part 5 and Part 6 of this blog series presented Scheduling and Monitoring, this blog will cover the Controlling element.

From a project perspective, the controlling process is initiated after the baseline schedule is prepared and the processes and practices for monitoring project activities and progress to the baseline are implemented by the project team.   Similar to controlling contract change orders, changes to the schedule need to be identified, confirmed, evaluated for effectiveness and then implemented to create a new baseline for monitoring work. 

Near the end of the Chapter, Roadstrum summarizes: 

Good Engineering Practices for Controlling

1.Take early corrective action where needed.

2.Balance project effort on all needed phases.

3.Watch continually for places where the effort can be reduced.

4.Make changes early rather than late.

Poor Engineering Practices for Controlling

1.Mistake “scheduling” for “control.”  Fail to monitor or to take needed action.

2.Overemphasize certain areas to the detriment of overall cost and schedule.

3.Failing to make controlling changes in time.

The development and use of scheduling software has enabled project teams to more effectively and efficiently monitor project work by providing automated analysis of critical schedule metrics to produce numerous reports for earned value, changes in critical activities, and production and performance indexes.    

PMBOK Chapter 6-Section 6.7.2 identifies tools and techniques for Control Schedule, including:

• Trend Analysis – This examines metrics comparing actual progress and expenses against past performance and available unit cost/production rates for the project estimate.
• Critical Path Method – This examines activities on the critical path to assess early or late completion of work and to identify threats or opportunities for schedule adjustments.
• Critical Chain Method – This examines resources allocations planned and actual to assess production rates, to forecast for activity completions and to identify adjustments in resources that may improve the schedule.
• Earned Value Management – Based on the earned value, this compares schedule and cost of planned work with the budget value of work completed.   The ratios for cost and schedule produce performance indexes (CPI=EV/Actual Cost; and SPI=EV/Planned Value. )

The controlling process encompasses documenting the rationale for the schedule action, and provides feedback to produce and share Lessons Learned on other projects.   The schedule software output can be used to explain variances, produce a record to initiate a schedule change, and to document the expected results from implementing the changes in the baseline schedule.