The gathering and analyzing of project data to keep the costs and schedules on track are the processes that lead to project control work. As the project control functions include initiating, planning, monitoring, and controlling, communicating, and closing out project costs and schedules, it has the iterative process for measuring project status. Also, the project control has to do some forecasting on what likely the work outcomes are based on the measurement. Once there is an unacceptable project outcome, the improvement has to be taken. Hierarchically, the project control nest under project management, this would be mean that the project manager is handling the project controller personnel. There must be a regular schedule for the project controller to report to the project manager about the specific project or entire portfolio of projects. Although the project control is just nesting under, it plays a very significant part in the success of the project management, it alerts the project stakeholders to potential trouble areas and allows them to course-correct if required. Before they make the project management successful, they have to do it on their own first which is by running through the complete project life cycle: from the initiation phase up unto closure, this is to monitor and regulate the various determinants that influence cost and schedule of the project.
The strengths of the project control bring its importance such as the following.
Project Planning
In everything people will do, planning always stands to be the most required part to do from the very start. Project planning is not just another stage of project management. It is one of the most significant stages of the process. In encompassing the project from the project control, the planning boosts the project performance and success rates. It includes the extensive mapping and organizing of the project goals, tasks, schedules, and resources before anyone assigns roles for the project and the team begins to execute the plan. It is easy for the control planner to avoid almost all of the problems that lead to the project failure with the proper planning or the project. Aside from that, planning is highly required for it helps keep all the collaboration aligned on the perfect track. The reason why a thing was being made by the group is to make it easier and efficient. Teamwork is a critical factor in any group activity most especially in project management. Following the plan, making all the collaborators know their roles and responsibilities. Planning makes the parts of the project to be fit to make a whole.
It is like making a Lego build, but this time, using the people’s ability to impart in doing work to make the team member productive in every action they have.
Budgeting
Every project has their limit financially. Everyone wanted things to fall into the track and nothing to be part of the problem such as the failed project. The failed project is expensive and that is something that we cannot stay. Even the greatest company standing in the industry have their failure and make a lot of unnecessary for the extra budget.
When it comes to project controlling, the integrating of the budget process into the activities is essential to calculate the total costs of the project. The accurate budget has to be presented to be controlled and this has to be understood when and why variances happen. As time goes by, the budget and refining the numbers, a transparent model is available for the senior managers and team members alike to work as both benchmarks throughout the project and know significantly important cash flows.
Planning Control helps Risk Management
Along with the project accomplishment, the quantitative risk analysis also uses past achievement but it takes into account future risks and possibilities for cost and schedule to implement a probabilistic forecast that presents a level of certainty in meeting budgeting and schedule objectives as per the main role of the project control. The help of the project control provides a meticulous approach to managing risk. By identifying the risks, monitoring the risks continuously, and developing contingency plans to address and mitigate issues, it becomes possible to reduce the impact on budget and schedule. It helps prevent some risks from happening in the future. Risk management encompasses the identification, analysis, and response to risk factors that form part of the life of the project. Effective risk management is with the help of the project control by means of controlling as much as possible the future outcomes by acting proactively. Hence, effective risk management offers much more potential to overcome both possibilities of a risk occurring and its potential impact. This is great with the help of project control which controls everything and sees everything most especially the risks.
Precise Forecasting to Reduce Risk
As the project control knows and understood everything in the project, they can present precise forecasting. The main role of forecasting is to predict possible outcomes to reduce the project risk and increase the possibility to target the project’s success. With the increase of the accuracy for the estimates-at-complete, the project controllers and managers can gain a lot more insight into the current drivers of the cost and schedule overruns. The genuine progress measurement is an important input to the forecasting progress for it serves as the comparison against the actual and committed costs that enable project controllers to extrapolate a forecast using a combination of the standard forecasting system and formulas. The regular updates assist the project controller by enabling faster response and correlative and corrective action to when a project begins to get off track. The project control has this forecasting to help the project not to meet the downfall.
It is very important for the project control to minimize the variance cost and schedule from what was originally planned that is why it has to act as a safety harness for the project management while reaching the dues and maintaining boundaries. The stay focused solely on the delivery of the project to its planned finished, cost management, risk management is the imparting of the project controllers for the successful project management.
