Project Control 101: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed
Control is often an illusion in business. But nowhere is it more tangible than in the project management process in the form of project control. This critical aspect of successful project delivery encompasses a range of time management and budget optimization strategies designed to keep initiatives on track. From construction sites to software development teams, project control principles apply across industries.
In This Article:
What is Project Control?
Project control is mandatory in successful project management and encompasses a range of strategies that help keep initiatives on track. At its core, project control focuses on managing time and budget constraints to ensure deadline completion with allocated resources. With this approach, project managers can efficiently leverage the people and materials they have at the ready.
Project control plays a pivotal role in the success of any project, acting as the compass that guides teams through complex development landscapes. By implementing robust control measures, organizations can significantly enhance their operational efficiencies and, as a result, project outcomes.
Well-implemented project controls create a cohesive framework that aligns stakeholders across the organization. This alignment cultivates a shared vision and enhances communication, ultimately leading to more streamlined decision-making processes. Companies leveraging robust project controls often find themselves at a competitive advantage, better equipped to handle challenges and deliver results.
By prioritizing project control, firms lay the groundwork for success, transforming potential obstacles into opportunities for innovation.
Why is Project Control Important?
Consider a software development project where daily, high-quality standup status updates provide invaluable insights into team progress. When focused on relevant metrics and milestones, these updates can accelerate project completion far more effectively than superficial reports. Project controls offer visibility into cost implications and timelines, enabling teams to navigate budget constraints and shifting schedules with agility.
Managers typically begin by gaining a deep understanding of the project's goals. This foundational knowledge allows them to identify key areas that can be influenced throughout the project lifecycle. For instance, a construction project manager might focus on controlling material costs and labor schedules to keep the build on budget and on time.
Risk management, a cornerstone of effective project control, empowers teams to anticipate and mitigate potential roadblocks. For instance, a construction project might establish contingency plans for weather-related delays, ensuring minimal disruption to the overall timeline. This proactive approach safeguards project objectives and boosts team morale by fostering a sense of preparedness.
Gathering relevant information is another crucial step in establishing effective project control. This may involve analyzing historical data from similar projects or consulting with subject matter experts to anticipate potential challenges. Once armed with this information, project managers can develop comprehensive plans that outline specific control measures.
Monitoring progress is an ongoing task in project control. Managers decide on appropriate metrics and tracking methods, such as earned value analysis (EVA)—a project management tool that helps monitor progress using formulas and metrics—or milestone tracking. As the project unfolds, they need to remain flexible and ready to revise plans in response to unforeseen circumstances. Adaptability is crucial to project control.
The Objectives of Project Control
Project control should inform the entire project lifecycle, from start to completion. The objectives of project control are to help ensure a project's success by:
- Staying On Schedule and Within Budget: Project controls help ensure a project is completed on time and without cost overruns.
- Delivering Quality: Project controls help ensure a project is completed at the expected level.
- Identifying and Addressing Risks: Project controls help spot potential watchouts before they cause delays or budget issues.
- Making Informed Decisions: Project controls provide accurate and real-time data to help project managers make wise choices.
- Improving Accountability: Project controls help establish consistent reporting among project team members and stakeholders.
- Ensuring Compliance: Project controls help meet regulations, standards and policies.
- Streamlining Change Management: Project controls provide a structured approach to introducing subtle or seismic change within a project.
The Difference Between Project Control and Project Management
While often confused, project control and project management are distinct concepts with unique roles in the project lifecycle. Understanding their differences is crucial for effective project execution and resource allocation.
While project control zeroes in on a project's financial and temporal pulse, project management takes a broader view, considering everything from team morale to client satisfaction. Both roles are essential, working in tandem to ensure project success.
Project Control
Project control is a specialized subset of project management, focusing primarily on two critical aspects: cost and schedule. It's the watchful eye that keeps projects on track financially and temporally. Project control professionals:
- Monitor and analyze project costs.
- Track schedule progress and adherence.
- Identify potential budget and timeline risks.
- Develop forecasts and recovery plans.
- Provide data-driven insights to project managers.
These specialists work closely with various stakeholders, from vendors to finance departments, but ultimately report to the project manager. Their expertise in software tools like Deltek Acumen Fuse allows them to generate detailed projections that inform decisions.
Project Management
In contrast, project management encompasses a broader scope, overseeing all aspects of a project lifecycle. It's a multifaceted discipline that requires a diverse skill set and a holistic approach. The project management process typically includes these roles:
- Assess project viability and set objectives.
- Develop comprehensive strategies and timelines.
- Execute plans and coordinate team efforts.
- Monitor progress and make necessary adjustments via project control.
- Deliver final results and conduct post-project reviews
Project managers orchestrate these phases, balancing stakeholder expectations, team dynamics and resource constraints. They rely on project control data to make informed decisions, but their purview extends beyond numbers and schedules.
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Types of Project Control
While there are several types of project control, six key areas stand out as essential for maintaining a project's integrity and ensuring its success: Scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, and communication.
Scope Control
Scope control involves managing any changes to the project's originally defined parameters. Managers must vigilantly monitor the project's boundaries to ensure the final deliverables align with the outcomes established during the planning phase. For instance, in a software development project, scope control might involve deciding whether to include a new feature requested by stakeholders mid-project or to defer it to a future release.
Schedule Control
Equally important is schedule control, which calls for continuous oversight of the project timeline. Project managers must track progress, identify potential delays and implement corrective actions to keep the project on track. This might involve adjusting task dependencies to ensure timely completion of all activities. Tools like Gantt charts or project scheduling software can be invaluable for visualizing the project schedule.
Cost Control
Cost control focuses on managing a project's financial aspects. It involves tracking expenses, forecasting future costs and adjusting to ensure the project remains within budget. This might include negotiating with vendors, optimizing resource allocation, or finding cost-effective alternatives to expensive solutions. Effective cost control requires regular financial reporting and analysis throughout the project lifecycle.
Quality Control
Quality control ensures that project deliverables meet or exceed the defined standards. This involves implementing quality assurance processes, conducting regular inspections and addressing any deviations from the established quality requirements. For example, in a construction project, quality control might involve testing materials, inspecting workmanship, and ensuring compliance with building codes and regulations.
Risk Control
Risk control is an ongoing process of identifying and managing potential threats to project success. Project managers must proactively anticipate and mitigate risks that could impact the project's scope, schedule, cost or quality. Risk control might involve developing contingency plans, implementing risk mitigation strategies or adjusting project plans to account for identified risks. Regular risk assessments and updates to the risk management plan are essential components of effective risk control.
Communication Control
Lastly, communication control is vital to project success by fostering transparency and engagement among all stakeholders. This involves establishing clear communication channels, ensuring timely dissemination of information, and actively managing stakeholder expectations. Effective communication control helps build trust, facilitates decision-making, and promotes collaboration throughout the project lifecycle. Project managers might use various techniques to keep stakeholders engaged, such as project dashboards or collaboration platforms.
What Are the Control Components in a Project?
Project control components are the essential building blocks that help keep projects on track, within budget and aligned with objectives.
- Risk management is a critical component of project control. By systematically identifying potential hazards and developing mitigation strategies, teams can address issues before they derail progress. For example, a construction project might assess weather-related risks and create contingency plans for severe storms or unexpected delays in material deliveries.
- Another vital element is the project scope document. This foundational text serves as a roadmap for an entire project. It outlines deliverables, timelines and resource requirements, providing clarity and direction for all stakeholders. A well-defined scope document helps prevent misunderstandings and scope creep, which can lead to cost overruns and missed deadlines.
- Earned value management (EVM) is a powerful tool that integrates cost, schedule and scope data to provide a holistic view of project performance. By comparing planned progress against actual results, EVM enables project managers to make informed decisions and course corrections. Solutions like Deltek Cobra can streamline EVM calculations, making it easier for teams to act on this valuable data.
- Project control systems encompass the technologies used to collect and analyze project data. These systems form the backbone of effective project control, powering teams to identify trends and generate actionable insights. Modern project control systems often leverage cloud-based platforms to facilitate real-time collaboration and data sharing across distributed teams.
- Change management is another component. As projects evolve, changes to scope, timeline, or resources are often inevitable. A robust change management process ensures these modifications are carefully evaluated, documented and communicated to all relevant parties. This helps maintain project integrity and prevents unauthorized changes from derailing progress.
- Cost control involves monitoring expenses, forecasting future costs and implementing measures to keep both down and within budget. Effective cost control requires accurate tracking of direct and indirect costs and the ability to analyze variances.
- Schedule management is closely intertwined with cost control. By developing realistic timelines, tracking progress against milestones and adjusting schedules as needed, initiatives stay on track. Advanced scheduling tools can help teams visualize dependencies and identify critical paths—linked tasks that typically take the most extended time durations to complete.
- Quality control ensures project deliverables meet stakeholder expectations. This involves establishing quality metrics, conducting regular inspections and reviews, and implementing corrective actions when necessary. By maintaining a focus on quality throughout the project lifecycle, teams can reduce rework.
- Communication management rounds out the core components of project control. Clear, consistent communication is essential for aligning team efforts and addressing issues promptly. Effective communication strategies might include progress reporting and the use of collaborative platforms to facilitate information sharing.
Real-World Applications of Project Control
Brands across a spectrum of industries leverage cloud solutions to enhance their project control capacities. Let's examine some real-world examples of how efficient project controls have helped companies transform their businesses into project powerhouses.
Dynetics
Dynetics is a commercial and defense contractor deeply involved in man-space flight technology. The company gained real-time visibility into project performance after centralizing cost and schedule data using Deltek Cobra and Deltek Acumen Fuse.
Thanks to a project control focus as a subset of a tightly integrated EVA approach and stellar overarching project management, Dynetics can now consistently deliver to DoD and commercial customers at cost and on schedule.
Northrop Grumman
In the aerospace industry, Northrop Grumman implemented a combination of Deltek Cobra and Acumen to optimize its project control practices.
The integrated solution enabled the company to perform sophisticated schedule analysis and risk assessments. Project teams could quickly identify critical path activities and potential bottlenecks. By leveraging these insights, Northrop Grumman improved its ability to meet contractual obligations and deliver complex aerospace projects successfully.
CACI
National security firm CACI turned to Deltek Cobra to bolster its project control efforts, using Cobra beyond its EVM capacities to facilitate global cost management—an out-of-the-box implementation.
The solution consolidates three different cost and pricing input systems through Cobra, boosting financial accuracy and streamlining three weeks of work down to just a few days. This enhanced capability led to better decision-making and increased client satisfaction.