What is the process of monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished by plan?

No matter if a particular project is developing as planned and the team behind it is effective at executing essential tasks, there is still a need to monitor the project’s progress. It is a project manager’s job to do this task while looking at it from the aspects of costs, performance, time and resources.

This work is done by continually comparing your current project status and current circumstances to the budget and work plan determined at the start of the project. Additionally, it is also essential to distinguish the planning parameters of the actual project to the parameters defined with the plan.

Other than that, it is also necessary to compare resources to those created in the plan. Project progress is calculated by performing these actions in different time periods and by looking back at what all got projected in the plan and when the project needs to get finished.

A project plan is essential for many things. It outlines the goal that managers have to reach to achieve the end of a project. Also, it emphasises on how a specific goal will be reached, who will work on the project, and which approach will take it towards achieving the goals.

Not only this, but a project plan also outlines when the goals are accomplished and how many resources may get utilised on that.

If you don’t create these projections and include them in your project plan, you will never be able to monitor how well your project is performing. That’s because you won’t have anything to compare your current performance to.

At the same time, the creation of a project planning approach needs diligence. Make sure that you didn’t miss anything significant that might affect your projections.

A good project manager will use his or her project collaboration software to see all of the reports concerning the project schedule and compare them to the actual schedule created in the project plan. With this method, a project manager can easily see how the project is developing.

Your project schedules can look like a structure representing the breakdown of work. It will help you recognise all of the activities that are done based on:

  • milestone achievements or materials that are necessary for finishing a specific project phase.

By overseeing the project schedules, project managers can recognise milestones that have been met and those that they haven’t and at the same time determine which tasks need more resources to be finished on time and within the budget.

You can display the budget of your project in the form of various resources such as pounds, euros, dollars, hours, weeks, or some other measure. The process is quite simple – at the end of a work week, month, or a day, you merely have to compare how many of the resources you are currently using to the projected budget you have until the end of your project.

It will help you understand what needs to get accomplished and is something that the stakeholders and the project manager would have used to determine the resources required for an individual project at the start. If the spending of resources starts exceeding the number you’ve predefined in your budget, it might mean that your project will not be able to reach its end goal.

The above-given scenario usually means that you will have to make adjustments in your project scope or simply limit the resources used for specific tasks.

What is the process of monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished by plan?

Project scope is a big word that includes all project requirements or objectives of a specific project. It is imperative to monitor the scope of your project because it is one of those factors that affect all of the other aspects of your project like the budget, resources, costs, or your schedules.

If your project has too many resources dedicated to it, the chances are that you will exceed the costs you can afford, and this will make your project unsuccessful. However, active scope management will help you identify exactly how much work is needed to complete a project. You need to track the project needs that you’ve defined and made sure that the current practice is within the requirements.

A collaborative project management software allows project managers to look at all of the predefined work everybody has to do and to see whether or not they’ve delivered the work required of them on time. When you ensure that there is no excess or insufficient work, the project will finish on time.

The first thing you need to do is define all of the resources in your project. The resources could be people working on a project, money, tools, equipment, facilities, and so on.

A lot of people make the mistake of monitoring only the resources valued in money, but other resources can also affect the opportunity costs, e.g., decreased human resources could mean that your project may not finish on time.

Project adjustments or delays could affect the availability and spending of resources, and this is why it is essential to monitor how they are used at all times, making sure that you always have the resources to perform actions which are necessary for a successful outcome.

Final Verdict…

To be able to monitor your project efficiently through all of the points that we mentioned, it is essential to get a collaborative project management software that can serve as a platform for all your monitoring actions. When you have everything displayed in real time, with your projections next to it, you can quickly notice when something is going wrong.

“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."

Learning Outcomes

  • Explain the basic control process.
  • Differentiate between feedback, proactive, and concurrent controls.

The proper performance of the management control function is critical to the success of an organization. After plans are set in place, management must execute a series of steps to ensure that the plans are carried out. The steps in the basic control process can be followed for almost any application, such as improving product quality, reducing waste, and increasing sales. The basic control process includes the following steps:

  1. Setting performance standards: Managers must translate plans into performance standards. These performance standards can be in the form of goals, such as revenue from sales over a period of time. The standards should be attainable, measurable, and clear.
  2. Measuring actual performance: If performance is not measured, it cannot be ascertained whether standards have been met.
  3. Comparing actual performance with standards or goals: Accept or reject the product or outcome.
  4. Analyzing deviations: Managers must determine why standards were not met. This step also involves determining whether more control is necessary or if the standard should be changed.
  5. Taking corrective action: After the reasons for deviations have been determined, managers can then develop solutions for issues with meeting the standards and make changes to processes or behaviors.

Consider a situation in which a fictional company, The XYZ Group, has suffered a decrease in the profits from its high-end sunglasses due to employee theft. Senior executives establish a plan to eliminate the occurrence of employee theft. It has been determined that the items are being stolen from the company warehouse. The executives establish a goal of zero thefts ($0) within a three-month period (Step 1). The company currently loses an average of $1,000 per month due to employee theft.

To discourage the undesired behavior, XYZ installed cameras in the warehouse and placed locks on the cabinets where the most expensive sunglasses are stored. Only the warehouse managers have keys to these cabinets.

After three months, XYZ managers contact the bookkeeper to get the sales and inventory figures for the past three-month period (Step 2). The managers then compare the figures with the previous period, taking into account orders for deliveries, returns, and defective merchandise (Step 3). It has been determined that the company lost $200 the first month, $300 the second month, and $200 the third month due to theft, which is an improvement but short of the goal. Managers then come up with suggestions for making adjustments to the control system (Step 4).

XYZ senior executives approve of the suggestion to institute a zero-tolerance policy for employee theft. Now, if there is evidence that an employee has stolen a pair of sunglasses, that employee’s job will be terminated. The employee handbook is updated to include the change, and XYZ executives hold a meeting with all warehouse employees to communicate the policy change (Step 5).

Timing of Controls

Controls can be categorized according to the time in which a process or activity occurs. The controls related to time include feedback, proactive, and concurrent controls. Feedback control concerns the past. Proactive control anticipates future implications. Concurrent control concerns the present.

Feedback

Feedback occurs after an activity or process is completed. It is reactive. For example, feedback control would involve evaluating a team’s progress by comparing the production standard to the actual production output. If the standard or goal is met, production continues. If not, adjustments can be made to the process or to the standard.

An example of feedback control is when a sales goal is set, the sales team works to reach that goal for three months, and at the end of the three-month period, managers review the results and determine whether the sales goal was achieved. As part of the process, managers may also implement changes if the goal is not achieved. Three months after the changes are implemented, managers will review the new results to see whether the goal was achieved.

The disadvantage of feedback control is that modifications can be made only after a process has already been completed or an action has taken place. A situation may have ended before managers are aware of any issues. Therefore, feedback control is more suited for processes, behaviors, or events that are repeated over time, rather than those that are not repeated.

Proactive control

Proactive control, also known as preliminary, preventive, or feed-forward control, involves anticipating trouble, rather than waiting for a poor outcome and reacting afterward. It is about prevention or intervention. An example of proactive control is when an engineer performs tests on the braking system of a prototype vehicle before the vehicle design is moved on to be mass produced.

Proactive control looks forward to problems that could reasonably occur and devises methods to prevent the problems. It cannot control unforeseen and unlikely incidents, such as “acts of God.”

Concurrent control

With concurrent control, monitoring takes place during the process or activity. Concurrent control may be based on standards, rules, codes, and policies.

One example of concurrent control is fleet tracking. Fleet tracking by GPS allows managers to monitor company vehicles. Managers can determine when vehicles reach their destinations and the speed in which they move between destinations. Managers are able to plan more efficient routes and alert drivers to change routes to avoid heavy traffic. It also discourages employees from running personal errands during work hours.

In another example, Keen Media tries to reduce employee inefficiency by monitoring Internet activity. In accordance with company policy, employees keep a digital record of their activities during the workday. IT staff can also access employee computers to determine how much time is being spent on the Internet to conduct personal business and “surf the Web.”

The following diagram shows the control process. Note that the production process is central, and the control process surrounds it.

What is the process of monitoring activities to ensure that they are being accomplished by plan?

The control process

Contribute!

Did you have an idea for improving this content? We’d love your input.

Improve this pageLearn More