Monitoring and Control

Summary Report

Step 1 :Project Management Initiation and Planning Documents

For Federal Level
Total Estimated Time  
Total Estimated Cost  
Names of Provinces / States  
Names of Citites  
Justification  
Company Profile  
Objective  
Criteria  
Requirement  
High-level project description, product characteristics  
Name Role Responsibilities
    Sponsor   Approve or deny scope change requests as appropriate Evaluate need for scope change requests Accept project deliverable
    Project Manager   Measure and verify project scope Facilitate scope change requests Facilitate impact assessments of scope change requests Organize and facilitate scheduled change control meetings Communicate outcomes of scope change requests Update project documents upon approval of all scope changes
    Team Lead   Measure and verify project scope Validate scope change requests Participate in impact assessments of scope change requests Communicate outcomes of scope change requests to team Facilitate team level change review process
     
     
     
     
     
     
Scope Description  
Project deliverables  
Product user acceptance criteria  
Project boundaries (includes and excludes)  
Project constraints  
Project assumptions  
Schedule to be kept in Microsoft Project 2007.  May-31-2015
Deliverables presented in Microsoft Word 2007  Jun-1-2015
Create and maintain throughout the project a Project Management Plan document with a revision sheet   May-31-2015
Provide weekly status information either in person or by email to sponsor and advisor according to agreed format. Status information should include activities completed, activities scheduled for next reporting period, and issues or assistance needed.   Jun-1-2015
  Maintain a running log of your project time (date, time expended, and activity description). Jun-2-2015
Establish and maintain current, an electronic project notebook, organized by Project Management and Product working documents and final deliverables.  Jun-3-2015
Evaluator:  

Step 2 :Planning

Step 3 :Executing

Step 4 :Monitoring & Control

Step 5 :Closing


your selected project planning model : tp-rapid Traditional Rapid
Traditional Rapid Linear Project Management

  • Project goal(s) are very clear at inception.
  • Requirement can be "almost " completely established at project inception ... before planning begins - Project Manager and client convinced of completenness..
  • Usual sequence/pattern of activity expacted.
  • Five process groups are executed once.
  • Minimum changes to scope expacted. Scope change request distrupt the plan.
  • Team members need not to be co-located.
  • Time and funding constraints.
  • Routine / reptitive tasks
  • Tools and templates are available ir easily obtainable
  • Designed t compress the project schedule to deliver the solutioin faster.
  • Planning is still done once.
  • Dependencies within each set should be high but between each set should be low.
  • Increase risk due to increased possibility for resource conflicts and reduced time to analyze and resolve problems.
  • Increased overhead & time to manage inter & intra feature set issues.

Risk

  • Does not accommodate change well
    • Almost any change request will cause problems with the schedule
  • Cost overruns
    • Client sees no work until late in the project.If problems with testing / acceptance, more work will have to be done…but most of the budget will have been spent
  • Too long before any deliverables are produced
    • Client sees product late in the project.  This leaves very little time for change (if funds are available for the work).  The project deadline is near and team members may already be allocated to other projects.
  • Requires complete and detailed plans.
    • A complete plan may be a waste of time.  Every (approved) change request leads to a revision to the project plan.  Danger of plans turning into non-value added work
  • More focused on process than providing business value
  • Focus is completing the project on time, within budget and according to requirements.  Client’s requirements may not actually satisfy the business need.  i.e. the deliverable does not do what the client expected.
  • Work of the project is compressed into shorter time frame. There is less time to investigate and implement corrective actions for items such as:
    • Scope change
    • Resource contention
    • Problem resolution

 


Your Selected Checklist
Monitoring and Control

Quality Monitoring and Control Checklists

 

A) Checklist for Quality Planning

Getting Started in Quality Planning
  • Pick the right project (not too large, not too small or insignificant) for quality improvement
  • Develop a quality management plan.
  • Define a quality policy. Establish quality goals and timeline when the goals can be achieved. Be as specific as possible. Examples:
    • Reduce defects by 30%
    • Reduce customer complaints by 30%
    • Cut down cycle time by 50%
    • Good example of a balanced policy: “We will build good ships here, at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good ships”. (From a naval shipyard in UK in late 1800s)
  • Determine who is in charge and who is responsible for quality.
Identify Customers

•           Identify all relevant customers by analyzing contracts (external customer who is paying for it), project organization (internal customers who are stake holders), and the intended product use (the end-user who will be using the product).  
•           Prioritize customers. Not all customers are equally important. Compare customers against each other to develop better understanding. For example, customer A may be more important than customer B, less important than customer C or equal to customer D. You could rank customers in terms on a scale of 0 to 10 (10 being crucial).

Establish Requirements

Identify requirements of all relevant customers.
Prioritize requirements from each customer’s point of view.
Prepare customer-weighted prioritization.
Define explicit, measurable specifications for each requirement. For example, how will you know if a specific requirement has been satisfied?

  

B) IT Specific Quality Checklist  

Break the Projects into Phases/Stages (Macro Analysis)
  • For Software Development Projects: Breakdown the overall development process into phases (e.g., life cycle phases such as requirements, design, etc.). A typical software life cycle is shown above.
  • For IT Service Projects: Breakdown the service into stages (e.g., initiation stage, problem definition stage, solution development stage, solution delivery stage, post-delivery stage, etc)
  • Make sure that the work between the stages flows smoothly without any delays and wastage of resources. For example, the transition between design and development/implementation should wait for 2 months for a programmer to be assigned. 
  • Make sure that the results produced by each stage/phase are of high quality (e.g. no defects, no reworks, etc.). This means that the results produced by ALL phases/stages are of high quality and not just the final code that is delivered to the user.  
  • Use project management tools and diagramming techniques such as PERT/CPM and others to properly manage the project.
  • Make sure that each stage/phase considers processes, technologies and people issues. 
Develop Detailed Work Steps from the Phases/Stages of work (Micro Analysis) 

This activity refines the phases/stages identified previously by using the following steps: 
Breakdown each stage/phase into very detailed “work-steps” (5 or more steps per phase). Work steps usually include a list of supplies (e.g., technologies) for a particular job, plus detailed guidance on how to do the work (e.g., best practices in software development).
Make sure that the work steps and instructions include mundane, day-to-day jobs that must be done correctly, in a certain order, and without mistakes. ensure that the work steps conform to the company policies and procedures. Use your written work steps to train software developers, supervisors and managers. Use the work steps also for testing and for internal audits.
The main idea is to use your work steps for breaking down jobs and making improvements.   In short, use your work instructions to make sure the work that must be done, gets done right.

Refine Macro/Micro Analysis based on Frameworks

Refine the work steps (the process) by using Lean approach (i.e., no waste no-where) . Thus Lean can be used for process improvement.
Define the results produced (no defects, no rework, do it once and do it right) by using the Six Sigma approach. Thus Sigma can be used for end-product/service improvement. 
Use the CMMI approach to start at the right level and then go to higher levels gradually. It is a good idea to start with CMMI Level 2 and then go higher. Basically, CMMI levels can be used for “continuous improvement”. 
Make sure that a right balance of processes, people and technologies exists throughout (too much technology and no attention to processes and people is not good).
Familiarize yourself with the available frameworks. Exhibit 1 shows some key resources to get started.         

 

Selected References on Quality Frameworks

CMMI Main Website (www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/

  • Six Sigma and Lean Tutorials: The overview and references on Wikepedia on these topcs are pretty good.
  • ISO 9000 Quality Management Program weblink (http://www.iso.org/iso/qmp)  is a pretty good starting point for ISO 9000 info.
  • ITIL official website (http://www.itil-officialsite.com/home/home.asp)

Note: After reviewing these websites briefly and getting an idea, you should do a Google search for more specific articles by, for example, looking for “LSS versus CMMI”. Articles comparing the key frameworks are always appearing in the literature.


C) Quality Assurance Checklist 

Identify QA Activities

  • Define activities that will ensure project performance conforms to requirements. These activities are the main responsibilities of the QA group. The activities may be actually performed as part of the Work Project activities (e.g., project/service phases/stages, work steps, etc.) but are still the responsibility of the QA group.  
  • Develop metrics for each activity, i.e. number of defects, number of calls handled in an hour, etc.  
Assemble a QA Plan
  • Assemble quality assurance activities into a quality assurance plan.
  • Include what, when, and who.
  • Include processes, technologies and people in the activities
Example of a QA activity: 
  • Requirement: “answer 99% of hotline calls within one ring”
  • Assurance activity: Determine percentage of calls answered on one ring during a 48 hour period
  • Metric: percentage of calls answered in one ring
Sample quality assurance plan:

A QA plan documents all QA activities so that they can be managed and improved continuously.  The following table could be used for a QA plan.

Activity no

Requirement

Specific

Assurance Activity

Schedule

Responsible Entity

A172

Calls answered promptly

99% within one ring 

Calls answered per 48 hours

Done several times a week

Joe Mason

D)  Quality Controls Checklist  

  • Monitor and measure project performance.
  • Compare results to specifications.
  • Take action based on results.
  • Adopt a continuous quality improvement model, i.e., institutionalize the lessons learned and use them over and over again.  

The following (plan, do, check and act) circle represents continuous quality improvement.

q-circle