Management Control Systems (2nd Edition)

Management Control of Projects : Overview

It also involves establishing the quality standards and identifying the ways of ensuring quality assurance; planning for staff acquisition; identifying the roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships among the project team members; determining the communication needs of different stakeholders and ways to address them; risk identification and evaluation; etc.

Project-driven organizations usually adopt the matrix organization structure that combines the advantages of the pure functional organizational structure and the product organizational structure. In the matrix organization structure, the project teams are formed within the traditional line and staff organization. Each member of the project is responsible for achieving the objectives of the project by adhering to the project plan. There should also be a clear demarcation in terms of control-related roles and responsibilities of each member of the project to avoid confusion.

Once the project enters the execution phase, the project manager should take up the responsibility of reviewing the progress of the project in a timely and phased manner in order to take corrective actions, if required. Some of the methods and tools used for controlling project execution are - project review, cost monitoring and control, schedule control, earned value analysis, progress measurement, productivity measurement, and progress reporting.

The course of action in a project could change from that originally planned due to either external factors or internal factors. These changes should be kept in view to control the cost of the project. Change control systems, configuration management, and scope creep are three key concepts associated with overall change control.

Overall change control also includes scope change control, schedule change control, and cost change control. Scope change control involves identifying the changes in the scope and managing the factors that cause scope changes to see that the changes are advantageous to the project. The project manager has to consider the project schedule, performance reports, and change requests while controlling the schedule. The cost change control system describes the procedures that bring about changes in the cost baseline. A formal change control system can minimize the risk associated with a change.

Project audit is a key step in the process of closing a project. It can be carried out for the whole project or for a part of the project. It involves detailed inspection of the management of a project, its methodology, its techniques, its procedures, its documents, its properties, its budgets, its expenses, and its level of completion. Some of the important considerations in project auditing are the depth of the project audit, timing of the project audit, and the content and format of the project audit report. Project control is also concerned with the conservation and proper utilization of resources - physical assets, finances, or human resources. The project manager has to play the role of a conservationist.

Chapter 14 : Overview