Step 06: Project Control Procedures
Description
Objective

To

- ensure that all procedures required to carry out and control project work are established,

In a way that

- identifies all necessary procedures,

- defines appropriate standards,

- defines necessary performance levels and tolerances,

So that

- all project work is carried out as effectively as possible.

Overview

There should be clearly established control procedures for any piece of work. A Project is not an exception to this rule, but due to the nature of projects, these procedures are often not readily available. It is therefore necessary to identify what procedures are required and to define these procedures.

Any established project control procedures that an organization has in place should be incorporated into the project plan. Procedures to consider are:

- Quality Control

- Progress Control

- Change Control

- Version Control

- Issue Resolution

Any existing procedures should be modified if necessary for the project. Additional procedures may be required, depending on the nature of the project.

The project and stage schedules need to incorporate project control tasks, and may need to be updated as a result of defining the control procedures.
Step 06: Project Control Procedures
Task .010 Set Up Project Administration
Create an electronic file structure to consistently maintain the administration of plans, progress, status reports, change control and issue management.
Task .020 Establish Quality Control Procedure
Determine the mechanisms to be used to ensure the quality of products produced during the project.

Task products may be subject to informal peer review. These task products should be small and the peer reviews frequent, since defects can be quickly identified and corrected with minimal rework.

Step products will be subject to formal review, with defects being recorded and assigned for correction.

Specify for each product the Co-ordinators and Key Resources who will perform the quality reviews.

See the "Quality Control" process for more details.
Task .030 Establish Progress Control Procedures
Set up the infrastructure to facilitate:

- capture of actual effort and re-estimated effort to complete,

- weekly status meetings to discuss achievements, forthcoming work, and issues,

- production of weekly status reports.

See "Progress Control" process for more details.
Task .040 Establish Project Control Factors
Determine the project Control Factors.

It is important to agree in advance with the Project Board the "elasticity" of the project, so that the suitable controls are applied in response to deviations from the plan.

The Project Dimensions are:

- Cost: the total cost of personnel and non-personnel resources,

- Schedule: the stage end dates,

- Performance: the quantity and quality of products.

They can be controlled by the following Management Directives:

- Maximize: the project dimension which will be most tightly controlled, with the least permitted deviation, to achieve project success,

- Constraint: the next most important dimension which will be optimized within the constraints of the first,

- Accept: the dimension whose performance (or lack of) will have to be accepted to achieve the first and second.

A directive can be assigned to only one project dimension.

Example 1: to meet the schedule end date, while constraining costs, we will accept a lower quality product.

Example 2: to achieve a high quality product, while constraining costs, we will accept a later finish date.

Quantify the tolerances with respect to schedule, cost and quality before the Project Board is automatically alerted.
Task .050 Establish Change Control Procedures
Identify the need for change control on the project.

A change request may require rework to both completed products and those under development, as well as future tasks. If it is not controlled then it will impact the project schedule and costs, and quality of the final product.

Define the levels of change control to be used to control changes to each type of product for this stage.

Create a Change Control Log.

See "Change Control" process for more details.
Task .060 Establish Issue Resolution Procedure
Create the Issue Log.

See "Issue Resolution" process for more details.
Task .070 Review Project Control Procedures
Conduct a review to ensure that the standard Project Controls are in place.
Step 07: Business Case
Description
Objective

To

- prepare a business case which compares the benefits and costs of the proposed project,

in a way that

- looks creatively for all possible areas of benefit,

- thoroughly researches all areas of cost,

- quantifies benefits in financial terms wherever possible,

- quantifies cost in financial terms,

- provides an assessment of the risks of the project and ideas on how they can be reduced,

- draws conclusions about the merits of the case,

- offers alternatives where appropriate,

- revises other sections of the project plan,

so that

- senior management has good quality quantitative information to guide their decision as to whether to proceed with the project.

Overview

One of the objectives of the project initiation stage of a project is to gather sufficient information to assess whether it is worthwhile to proceed.

Other Project Initiation steps will develop much of this information. This step extends that information with financial values to provide a business case for the continuation of the project.

One essential piece of information which has not been addressed in previous steps is the identification of the benefits of the project. These must be researched and documented.

The benefits can be compared against the costs which are included in the project budget.

These two basic sets of information are then compared and analyzed to ensure that proceeding with the project makes sense from a financial perspective.

This step also examines the risks associated with the project, which need to be considered by senior management (the Project Board), when making decisions about the project. Risks associated with the project as it has been defined in the other Project Initiation steps are examined, and actions to reduce, mitigate, or eliminate the risks are identified.

The risks of not carrying out the project are the risks associated with not achieving the benefits identified for the project.

In developing the Business Case, it may be necessary to adjust other parts of the project plan, including the Scope, Project and Stage schedules, and the Project Organization.
Task .010 Determine the Project Costs
Review the project budget and determine that all development costs have been identified.

The project constraints will have stated the maximum project cost. This task is intended to develop an initial project budget within these constraints.

Develop an initial project level estimate of costs. As with the sliding planning window, this project level estimate is intended to give an overall cost of the project. It is a top-down estimate, and will be revised and revalidated at the end of each stage. Although there will be many assumptions, it is very important that an initial estimate of project costs is completed. Failure to produce an initial estimate of project cost, with supporting assumptions and caveats, will tend to suggest that the project objective, scope, approach and resourcing have not been properly thought through.

Estimate costs by the following categories:

Development (including Conversion and Installation)

- Staffing, internal and external resources who will chargeable to the project, e.g., project team, contractors, trainers, technical writers, etc.

- Hardware, includes purchases and licences

- Software, includes purchases and licences

- Project Training, for the project team to develop the application

- Installation Training, for clients, operations, etc. to use the application

- Miscellaneous, includes copying and printing, office space, accommodation, travel, subsistence, supplies or other costs which cannot be classified above.

Operational & Maintenance

- Staffing, operations, maintenance, support, clients, trainers

- Hardware, includes purchases, licences, machine time, telecommunications, data storage

- Software, includes purchases and licences

- Miscellaneous, includes copying and printing, office space, accommodation, travel, subsistence, supplies or other costs which cannot be classified above.

Aggregate the Development costs by stage.
Task .020 Quantify Benefits
Identify and quantity all benefits associated with the final product of the project. Attempt to put a financial value on each benefit, so that the benefits are tangible.

During project scoping Critical Requirements Analysis will have identified and qualified the major requirements. The technique requires that "Performance Criteria" and "Performance Levels" be identified for each Critical Performance Area (CPA). The major requirements will be identified and associated with the corresponding CPAs. It is therefore possible to extrapolate this further and place a value upon a requirement and quantify the benefits.

For example: The performance criteria for the CPA "Perfect Order" may be the number of incorrect orders per 1000 orders processed. The current performance level is 50 per 1000. The required performance level is 10. The clients, in conjunction with the project team, are expected to be able to translate this reduction of errors from 50 to 10 into a $ value.

Define for each benefit, when it is expected to be accrued. It is very useful to be able to map out the expected benefit through time since it will re-enforce the justification of the project.

Quantifying thebenefits is an excellent way of setting realistic business expectations of the project.

Document any calculations used to determine tangible benefits since it will be necessary to repeat the calculation process in subsequent stages of the project.
Task .030 Determine Breakeven Point
Establish the breakeven point for the project as a whole

Create a cost worksheet which charts accumulated costs and accumulated benefits through time. Generally, costs are incurred prior to accruing the benefits. Where the benefit line crosses the cost line will indicate the expected breakeven point.

Review whether the projected breakeven point is acceptable. The longer the breakeven point, the less chance that it will ever be achieved.
Task .040 Analyze Risk
Determine the risks associated with conducting the project. Risks tend to be factors which are not within the control of the project manager, but which could nevertheless result in the failure to achieve the project success criteria.

Conduct a Risk Analysis. Risks can be categorized as:

- External Dependencies,

- Organizational,

- Planning,

- Business Case,

- Technical.

Evaluate each risk factor within these categories and determine a value. Aggregate the risk values by category to determine low, medium and high risk areas.

The real benefit of this exercise is not in detemining a numeric vaule, but in identifying areas of the project which are exposed to risk.

Identify the medium and high risk factors and determine appropriate countermeasures to reduce, mitigate or eliminate the risks. Where appropriate include these countemeasures as steps and tasks in the project and stage plans. Document the assumptions in the task descriptions and cross reference them back to the project risk factors.
Task .050 Review Business Case
Conduct a product review of the Business Case to ensure that the Business Case is complete and accurate.
Step 08: Project Initiation Stage Assessment
Description
Objective

To

- document the results of the Project Initiation stage and to have the results reviewed by management,

In a way that

- provides a comprehensive package of information from which a decision can be made,

- gains agreement on the scope of project,

- gains agreement on the overall approach and schedule for the project,

- gains agreement on the Business Case for the project,

- gains agreement on the Project Organization,

- gains commitment to making the necessary resources available for the project,

- gains agreement to the approach and schedule for the next stage of the project,

- gains agreement to the control procedures defined for the project,

- provides a record of the project and stage plans for use in managing and controlling the project if it gets authorization to proceed,

- confirms that the Project Initiation stage is complete,

so that

- a decision can be made as to whether to commit to and authorize the project.

Overview

An Stage End Assessment should be held at the end of every stage in the project. The Project/Stage Manager and Project Team report their progress and recommendations to the Project Board to gain the Board's approval to proceed with the project.

The work carried out in the Project Initiation steps is collated into a single product.

For small projects the document is the Project Initiation Checklist. This single product comprises objectives and scope, organization, tentative schedule and estimate, milestone activities and products, business case, and risk analysis.

For medium and large projects the document is the Project Initiation Report. It consists of:

- Project Objective

- Project Scope

- Project & Stage Schedules

- Project Organization

- Project Control Procedures

- Business Case for the project

- Risk Analysis

- Recommendation

For medium projects the Project Initiation Report will include the detailed schedule (Stage Plan) for the entire project. A "go / no go" decision will be made for the entire project by the Project Board.

For large projects the Project Initiation Report will include the project level schedule (Project Plan) and a detailed schedule (Stage Plan) for the next stage only. A "go / no go" decision for the next stage will be made by the Project Board. Upon completion of this next stage, a recommendation to proceed with the entire project will be made to the Capital Aquisition Committee. The Project Schedule consists of:

- Project Level WBS Description

- Major Products List

- Overall Project Schedule

The Stage Plan for the next stage consists of:

- WBS Description Report

- Products List

- Resources Requirement (including roles and responsiblities)

- Baselined Stage Schedule

- Cost Worksheet for the next stage

By agreeing to the plans, the Project Board are committing to the provision of funding and other resources, and understanding and accepting the assumptions, pre-requisites and risks. They must ensure that appropriate Progress, Quality and Change Control procedures are being administered effectively.
Task .010 Compile Project Initiation Report
For medium and large projects, collate all the elements of the Project Initiation Report, and the project and stage plans, into a single product for review by the Project Board.
Task .020 Prepare Project Initation Stage Assessment
Decide what decisions the Project Board must make. These will cover issues that have arisen during Project Initiation, and the decision on how to proceed with the project.

Determine the recommendations to be made to the Project Board concerning those decisions. If the development Stage Manager and the Client Co-ordinator disagree, then record both with supporting arguments.

Determine the information the Project Board needs to make the decisions.

Determine the best way to provide that information to the Project Board.

Prepare advance material for the Project Board.

Arrange and schedule a Project Board meeting and send out the advance material.

Prepare a structured agenda for the Project Board meeting.

Prepare a brief report covering the work carried out during the stage.
Task .030 Conduct Project Initiation Stage Assessment
Follow the prepared agenda and present the results of the stage to the Project Board.

Make recommendation.
Task .040 Follow-Up Project Initiation Stage Assessment
Update the Project and Stage Plans based on the decisions made by the Project Board.

Create a Stage End Approval Report and obtain Project Board signatories. Record any qualifications.
Task .050 Compile Small Project Initiation Checklist
For small projects, create the Small Project Initiation Checklist. Attach the original Blue Form.
Task .060 Prepare Small Project Assessment
The Project Initiation Checklist is to be reviewed by the following parties in order to obtain the "go / no go" decision:

- Client Originator,

- Client Originator's Manager (Department Manager),

- development Project Manager,

- development Manager.

By agreeing to the Project Initiation Checklist the parties are committing to the provision of funding and other resources, and understanding and accepting the assumptions, pre-requisites and risks.

Determine the best way to obtain this decision. Either distribute the Project Initiation Checklist to the individuals or organize a meeting.
Task .070 Review Small Project Assessment
Ensure that the parties clearly understand the character of the project, and how it will be executed. Provide the parties with adequate information to enable them to make a "go / no go" decision. Assess the urgency of the project relative to other outstanding projects. Where possible set an expectation of the project Start and End date.
Task .080 Follow-Up Small Project Assessment
Authorized small projects will be subject to the Small Project prioritization process. Rejected small projects are removed from the prioritization process.