Project Management in Practice Study Set 3

In order to manage for overall project success, control should be exercised at a very high and aggregated level and not get bogged down with unnecessary details.

Statistical quality control techniques can be helpful for determining what size variances are significant.

It is often the case with particularly challenging or uncertain projects that the planning-monitoring-controlling effort is minimized so that the "real work" can be done.

A common mistake is to focus too much on results and not enough on the intensity of activity.

Project monitoring and control can be thought of as opposite sides of project selection and planning.

Too often, intensity of activity is measured instead of results.

Control should not be used at the detailed work level in order to avoid stifling innovation.

The purpose of control is to assign blame.

The key to setting up a monitoring system is to identify the special characteristics of scope, cost and time that need to be controlled in order to achieve the project goals.

Monitoring is the direct connection between project planning and control.

An important use of data analysis is to identify who to properly blame for poor project performance.

The plan-monitor-control cycle constitutes a "closed loop" process.

Control is the collection, recording, and reporting of project information.

The most important use of data gathered from monitoring is learning from mistakes.

The plan-monitor-control cycle constitutes an "ongoing open loop" process.

The purpose of control is to ensure that all interested parties have the information they need.

In order to manage for overall project success, control must be exercised at the detailed work level for each aspect of project performance.

One way of linking planning and control is to monitor project progress on a Gantt chart.

The most important use of data gathered from monitoring is control.

Mechanisms to gather and store data rarely need to be designed.