How to Monitor &
Control a TPM Project
Since a project plan is a system, it
can get out of balance. For this reason, controls should be designed to
discover out-of-balance early and put measures to put the project in the right
way. You can use a variety of reports as control tools but using graphics is
the most preferred since it doesn’t need a lot of reading. As the project work
is underway, you need to establish a reporting system that ensures that it
proceeds according to plan by keeping you informed of the various variables as
compared to the plan. This reporting system can be established by choosing from
among the hundreds of reports that are standard fare regarding the administration
software packages.
There are five types of project
status reports which includes: current periods reports that reports on
activities that were open during the period, cumulative reports that contains
the history of the project from the launch up to the closing stages of the
present report period, exceptional reports that shows variance from the plan,
stoplight reports that are a variance used on any of the types of the previous
reports and variance reports that reports the difference between the planned
and actual events
Using graphical reporting tools it
important since it helps the senior manager to use few minutes to digest the
report. These tools include: Gantt charts as the most frequently used and the
easiest-to-grasp depictions of project activities. This type of chart is given
as a two-dimensional illustration of the project plan where actions are
depicted in the rows as well as time for condition reporting. Burn charts are
another tool that shows the cumulative consumption of any resource over time. They
are articulated as a fraction of the allocated income or the amount of the
resource used. These types of charts are very simple, but limited in their
value. Milestone trend charts show the major proceedings that an individual
want to trail regarding the project life. These types of major proceedings are
activities that have a duration that is zero and merely indicate that certain
exist in the project. Milestone events are planned in the project the same way
that activities planned the project.
To manage project performance you can
use earned value management (EVM) indexes, even though, this tool is not
specifically used for improving the process, and its capabilities make it an
important element. This tool integrates schedule, scope as well as cost to aid
in the assessment of the project performance. You can measure actual
performance in relation to the baseline value of developing baseline costs. The
performance index and key metrics of this technique include: The planned value
(PV) authorizes budget allocated to the activity accomplished for a given work.
The actual cost (AC) refers to the actual cost incurred in the work done for an
activity and the Earned value (EV) is the work performed value articulated in
terms of the financial plan assigned approval to the work for a given activity.
The schedule performance index (SPI)
measures the closeness of the project to perform the work that it was actually
scheduled to perform when you are ahead of schedule PV is less than EV, hence
SPI will be greater than one. On the other hand, cost performance index (CPI)
is the gauge regarding the closeness of the project to expenditure on the work
done to what planned. CPI will be greater than one if you are spending less
than the budgeted and less than one if you are spending more.
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