Measuring Your Project Health
Written by AdministratorTuesday, 12 February 2008 There is a way to provide a project management status report
There are six criteria that can be used to measure your project health. They are:
o Time (How are we going against schedule?)
o Cost (How are we going against budget?)
o Resources (How much time are we spending on the project?)
o Scope (Is the scope creep in line with expectations?)
o Quality (Are we reviewing and fixing quality problems?)
o Actions (Do we have action items outstanding?)
By looking at the performance against these six criteria as a project dashboard, a view of the parts of the project that are OK and the parts that are not OK can be formed.
- Project Time Line
The most common tool for managing a project is the schedule. Are we on time? At any point in a large project, there will probably be one or two tasks behind schedule and an equal number ahead of schedule. By setting parameters as to the number over schedule for the traffic lights to change, you can present the performance against schedule as a set of lights.
- Project Cost Management
It is not sensible to monitor budget in total. If the budget were spent half way through a project, we would suddenly be in trouble with no warning that the problem was occurring. For this reason, we need to create a project cash flow for the budget. Typically this is our estimate month by month of expenditure.
By calculating the expected expenditure versus actual expenditure at any point, we can calculate how we are performing against our budget. This requires some special handling if accrued costs are involved.
- Project Resources
Just as we have a cash flow for money, we can do a project human resource projection. To do this we need to estimate how many man-days per period will be used on the project. By comparing that to timesheets, we can work out if we are spending more or less time on the project than estimated.
This technique does not measure trade off's regarding the quality of the resources. The quality will be largely covered by the budget. If less skilled resources are allocated to the project, the cost will be lower and consequently the expenditure against budget will be less. It may however require longer to complete the work, or more resources may be needed.
If higher skilled resources are used, the budget may be exceeded but the work completed in a shorter time. It may even be a sensible decision to use more, lower skilled resources to achieve the same objectives. The decision is usually driven by the availability, cost and time to complete the task. This is all about project human resource management.
- Project Scope Management
Every project will have some scope changes. A weakness in most project scope management is that scope changes are not monitored. Approval is often verbal and not recorded.
A better way is to admit the blindingly obvious at the planning stage - there will be scope changes, and we need to allow for them. The next step is to put in place a tracking system with approvals. At the start of the project, estimate how much scope increases are likely to be as a percentage of the estimated budget, and as each increase is approved, monitor the total scope creep.
- Project Quality Management
One way to monitor quality is to set up a quality assurance project plan with quality events at the planning stage. These are activities that can be undertaken to check quality such as a walkthrough, or an inspection of a document, or testing of a particular component. As each of these events is completed, we can list action items flowing from the activity. For example, after a document inspection, we might have two action items. The first is to summarize the key points in the executive overview, and the second to verify findings in a particular section with the departmental manager concerned.
We now have a measurement. By checking the number of Quality Action Items outstanding, we can report on quality.
- Project Action Items
The final parameter is Action Items outstanding. Many situations in a project generate action items.
* They could be generated by identification of a benefit. There needs to be an action item to follow up the benefit delivery.
* It could be generated by a risk where certain actions are required to mitigate the risk.
* It could be an issue that needs action items to resolve.
* It could be a project review where actions on recommendations are to take place.
Unfortunately, in many projects there is more focus on identifying a problem (Issue, risk, assumption etc.) than taking action to address the problem. One of the most important attitudinal changes a project manager can bring to a project, is to shift the focus from identifying problems, to creating action items for every problem. No issue should exist without at least one action item to address the issue.
Taking this a step further, an action has three parts. Someone, has to do something, by a particular date. Someone means one person. It does not mean two people or a team. Immediately more than one person is responsible, the finger pointing starts. "I thought he was doing it!" Better make one person responsible for the task even if they have to recruit others to help.
The key to monitoring the actions is to determine how many are overdue. You might choose to take a hard line and say if any action items are overdue the light turns red. Alternatively, you might choose to allow 5 overdue to show a yellow light and over 5 a red light. a
Project Dashboard - Conclusion
There is a saying that if it cannot be measured, it cannot be managed. Traditionally, projects have used schedules and budgets to monitor progress. This only provides part of the answer. It does not address the other variables. Just because a project came in on time and budget does not mean it is a success. The deliverables may be of poor quality, and there may be dozens of outstanding issues. A much broader view is required.
On another level, there needs to be a simple way to collect the data. Mechanisms need to be put in place that automates the collection of information. You do not want to bury the project team in data collection and analysis. Any data collection should be an extension of what the project team normally do, rather than a separate exercise.