Monitor and Control Project Work

00:01 This module covers the monitor and control project work process, which is part of the Project Integration Management Knowledge Area.

00:12 Very important because you need to be able to monitor what you're doing against what you plan to do and, if necessary, make changes.

00:22 Both the difficulty and memorization are low because a lot of project managers already do this work very well.

00:30 Here is the project integration management knowledge area, and within it we can see the six processes and the Monitor and Control Project Work process, which is part of the monitoring and controlling domain process group. In relation to the domain task alignment, this particular process delivers the following domain tasks monitoring and controlling task one, which says Measure project performance using appropriate tools and techniques in order to identify and quantify any variances and corrective actions.

01:08 Monitoring and Controlling Task five.

01:11 Review the issue log and update if necessary, and determine corrective actions by using appropriate tools and techniques.

01:18 In order to minimize the impact on the project and monitoring and controlling tasks.

01:25 Capture, analyze and manage lessons learned using lessons, learned management techniques and order to enable continuous improvement.

01:34 So those are the three domain tasks that the monitor and control project process supports.

01:42 The key themes of this process are this is the part where you check that what you are actually doing is what you said or planned to do. And what you will be doing in this process is you will be comparing what you plan to do.

02:00 Against what you're actually doing, and if you find variance between what you plan to do and what you're actually doing, you must act via your documented and approved change control process at all times.

02:14 Remember what you are planning to do and what you're actually doing must match. Remember that this is an integration process, and in such it as high level, each of the other knowledge areas, with the exception of human resource management, has its own specific monitoring and control process.

02:37 So, for example, the scope management knowledge area has a control scope process. The Cost Management Knowledge Area has a control costs process, etc.

02:48 throughout the rest of the Bot guide.

02:50 So this is the high level one each.

02:52 The other knowledge areas has a specific controlling process to cover that particular element of the project management plan.

03:01 So let's take a look at some of the inputs that you could use if they were relevant to you. First up, the project management plan.

03:08 Well, of course, we want the project management plan because it contains the plan on how we're going to monitor and control project work.

03:16 It's going to give us the guidance that we need on how we compare what we plan to do against what we're actually doing.

03:24 It's also going to contain all of those other subsidiary plans and baselines and documents and registers.

03:30 And we're going to use those to compare the work that we're actually doing against them.

03:35 So the project management plan is an absolutely essential input into this process. We may also have schedule forecasts because obviously, we want to check how we're going in terms of time. Are we on track? Are we ahead of schedule or behind schedule? We'll only know that with our schedule forecasts.

03:58 We may also want to see how well we're going in terms of cost, are we ahead of cost? Are we under budget over budget? We'll only ever know that if we have our cost forecasts as an input into this process. We may also want to have our validated changes, we need to check that the changes have been done as per the description contained in the change.

04:23 The other inputs that we may find useful are relevant work performance information.

04:28 It's this work performance information which is going to tell us very clearly whether there is a variance between what we plan to do and what we're actually doing.

04:38 We may also have relevant enterprise environmental factors, such things like market conditions, other industry dictated ways of tracking change. We may also have some organizational processes, such as tools and templates to help us monitor and control our project work.

04:56 They may be as part of our project management methodology.

05:00 So we take these inputs and we can apply the following tools and techniques to them, if appropriate.

05:07 The first one is expert judgment.

05:10 And remember, you as project manager are an expert.

05:15 And this instance, it's probably your project team members that are the most important experts you want to consult because they are the ones doing the work, and they should have the best oversight about whether you're doing the work as planned. You may also consult with some external experts to help you determine whether you're doing what you plan to do.

05:37 You may also have some project management information systems, things like all of your information still stored on a particular folder on a particular drive somewhere that's easy to find and get access to.

05:50 And you'll also be running meetings, regular meetings to check that what you're doing is what you plan to do.

05:56 So these are the tools and techniques you can use if appropriate.

06:02 If you use these tools and techniques appropriately upon the relevant inputs, you will probably generate change requests if you detect variants or a difference between what you plan to do and what you're actually doing.

06:17 Then you raise a change request as per your change management plan, which is part of your project management plan.

06:24 These change requests then go on to become an input into the Perform integrated change control process, where they will be assessed and decisions made.

06:35 You may also choose to produce work performance reports.

06:40 Now these are reports that take that work performance information and put them into a usable format to distribute to stakeholders to let them know how well your project is going.

06:52 You may also choose to update small elements of your project management plan or the subsidiary plans, and also any other relevant project documents that need to be updated, such as your lessons learned documentation.

07:06 Now, collecting lessons learned as one of the most important things you can do as a project manager in the exam.

07:13 The default assumption is that all project managers collect lessons learned throughout their project, collate them and store them at the end of the project.

07:22 But also, the default position is that when you start a project, you have access to lessons learned from previous projects and you can go to those lessons learned as you're starting a project and find out what went well on previous projects and what didn't go so well. What you're trying to do is to repeat the successes of previous projects and avoid the mistakes of previous projects.

07:45 So in that regard, lessons learned are a very valuable part of organizational intellectual property and should be gathered regularly throughout the project, particularly during monitoring and controlling work.

07:58 Because that's where you're going to expose most of the lessons learned.

08:02 And those lessons will include Did we do too much Planning or more often not enough Planning? Did we follow our plans? Did we check that what we were doing matched our plans? How did we act when we discovered a variance between what we plan to do and what we're actually doing? These are all the sorts of lessons learned that you will gather and remember a key thing.

08:25 The gathering of lessons learned is the first step.

08:28 Storing them where other people can find them easily and learn from them is the next step and maybe the most important step.

08:36 So in summary, the monitor and control project work process in the integration management knowledge area is where we check that the work is being done as per the relevant Planning documents.

08:50 And if we detect a variance between what we plan to do and what we're actually doing, we raise a change request so that at all times, what we plan to do and what we're actually doing are equal.

09:05 So the monitor and control project work is the process that guides all of the monitoring and controlling that we do.

09:12 It's a high level process.

09:15 Each of the other knowledge areas, with the exception of Human Resource Management Knowledge Area, has a specific monitoring and controlling process with specific tools and techniques in it.