Perform According to Plan

Once the project work is underway, the project manager needs to track numerous items to make sure the project is on schedule, on budget, and delivering a quality product that meets the requirement of the scope statement. For a typical up and running project, these tasks should be completed on a weekly basis. To effectively coordinate all of this work, the project manager must collect data about the project work and compare project execution against the baselines that were established during project planning.

Collect Data

You need a lot of information to be able to accurately track project performance. You need an organized, consistent means of collecting data. Tools that can be used to assist in data collection include progress reports, an issues log, and budget reports .

Progress Reports

A lot of the data you need to collect on the project work relates to the progress of tasks on the project schedule. One of the first things that you need to establish is the format and timing of regular progress reports from your team members . With everything you need to keep track of, it is important that there is a consistency to these reports, so that you can scan them quickly to get a big picture of how the team is doing. These reports should list the tasks each team member is working on, the current progress of each task, and the work remaining.

TABLE 8.1 : A Sample Progress Report

Task	hours worked	hours left	percent complete	notes

On most projects, you need to receive weekly progress reports from your team members to stay on top of project progress. The team should agree on when the reports are due and how they will be provided (email, paper copy, etc.).

You may find some team members who are lax in submitting progress reports. You need to stress with the team how critical it is to the success of the project that these reports be timely and accurate. You need to monitor progress reports and follow up with team members who do not submit reports. If the tardiness becomes habitual, schedule a meeting with the offender to discuss this as a performance concern.

If your project software is set up for updates to be made centrally by one person, the progress report may also be used as input to update schedule progress.

Issues

Every project will have issues that need to be resolved. In order to assure that issues are communicated and resolved, you need to develop and maintain an issues log. Various formats can be used to track project issues, and your PMO or other projects may provide an existing template.

Identify these key elements:

• What the issue is.

• How the issue affects the project.

• Who is accountable for resolving the issue.

• Current status of resolving the issue.

An issues log is often tracked using a spreadsheet, which allows for easy sorting by date or status. Figure 8.1 displays a sample log for tracking project issues.

FIGURE 8.1 Issues Tracking Log

An issues log can become very lengthy, especially on large, complex projects. You may opt to display only the open issues or leave issues on the log for a predetermined time period after the issue is closed.

The issues log is typically reviewed and updated during the project team meeting, which we will discuss later in this chapter.

Note  

You can find a version of the Issues Tracking Log on this book's companion CD, for your own use in project management.

Spending

The other important piece of data for the project manager to collect is the amount of money spent on the project. Tracking financial data is greatly simplified if your project has a dedicated financial analyst who can access the necessary reports from the finance systems. If that is not the case, you will need to take the necessary steps to receive the official budget reports for your project.

Depending on how current your financial management systems data are, you may need to do some manual tracking as well. Many project managers review and/or approve both the weekly time reporting of the project team members and any materials or equipment charged to the project. The last thing you want to see is a $100,000 surprise that hits the official budget tracking 2 months after the fact.

The data that you obtain from the progress reports, issues log, and spending reports are all key inputs in your quest to complete the project work according to the baselines created during project planning.

Progress Against Baselines

Now you will start to see the importance of the schedule and budget baselines that you established as part of scope planning and cost planning. These documents are used as a roadmap during project execution to determine whether the project work is being completed as planned. The schedule baseline, cost baseline, and scope statement are continually compared with the actual progress of the project. If you find deviations from any of these baselines, you must determine if any action is required.

The question to continually answer is where are you in your project as of this date? From the schedule perspective, did you plan to be further along, are you ahead of schedule, or are you right on track? Do the project budget reports indicate more or less spending than you had planned based on schedule progress?

In this chapter we will discuss what items you should focus on. Analyzing deviations from any of the project baselines and controlling risk and change will be discussed in detail in Chapter 9, 'Project Control.'

Schedule Baseline

Project team members may input task progress on a server-based project management software system or a central project administrator may complete the updates working off of the progress reports. Either way, the project manager needs to compare actual progress to the baseline on a regular basis. You may have been alerted to a potential problem by notes in the progress report or discussion from the team meeting, but you cannot assume that all existing or potential deviations from the baseline will be bought to your attention. Individual team members tend to focus on their assigned tasks rather than the impact to downstream tasks. A task that will last two extra days may not seem like a big deal, but if three other people cannot start their work until this task is done, there could be major impacts. A project manager will not have time to analyze every task that has deviated from the baseline, so particular attention must be paid to critical path tasks or tasks with multiple dependent tasks.

Evaluating Costs

Official corporate project budget reports contain budgeted dollars per task or per budget category and the corresponding dollars that were actually spent. Project budget reports compare what was planned with what has really happened from the perspective of dollars and indicate where the project has overspent or under spent. The budget report provides a basis for variance analysis.

Time reporting or invoices submitted for approval may provide an early warning that your budget report will not match plan. You want to pay particular attention to time reports that consistently exceed the number of hours a team member is dedicated to the project. Any given task estimate may not be accurate, but if a team member is working more hours than planned on a weekly basis, your salary budget is going to be overspent.

Scope Statement

Another document that tells you if you are on track is the scope statement. As milestones are reached for the completion of major deliverables, make sure these deliverables match what was documented in the scope statement.

You should be on the lookout for red flags that may indicate potential scope creep. If tasks from various team members on a particular deliverable are consistently taking longer than planned, don't wait for the deliverable to be completed to start asking questions. If scope has changed without an approved change request, you need to resolve this issue quickly.

Deliverable Sign-Off

As your project progresses, more and more tasks on the project schedule should be shown as complete. You need to be alert to any tasks that are reported as 'almost complete' for more than one progress reporting period. This may be a sign that the team member is behind or has found the task more complex than planned. In other cases, there may be uncertainty about closing the task. A few key questions can help determine the real issue and push for task completion.

The completion of a series of tasks leads to completion of a deliverable. Pay special attention to the completion of deliverable, as they may be associated with a milestone that requires sponsor or stakeholder review or sign off. If there are any issues with a deliverable, fixes may need to be made before additional work begins, so delaying sign off of deliverables can create a chain of rework .

The acceptance of all of the project work and the associated deliverables by the stakeholders is referred to as scope verification . The data you gather is compiled and communicated to the project stakeholders.