Control creation in project planning
Introduction
If the theoretical part is finished, the practical part starts. A project acquires a direction and momentum which is totally independent of anything you predicted once it began. If you come to terms with that from the start, you can then enjoy the roller-coaster which follows. You need to establish the means to monitor and to influence the project's progress at the beginning.
The two key elements to the control of a project are:
Recognized means of communication
Communication is essential in order to scrutinize growth, to obtain early caution of risk, to support support, to inspire through team participation. All of these depends upon your communication. Regular reports are invaluable - if you clearly define what information is needed and if teach your team how to provided it in a rapidly accessible form. Often these reports merely say "progressing according to schedule". These you send back, for while the message is desired the evidence is missing: you need to insist that your team monitor their own progress with concrete, tangible, measurements and if this is done, the figures should be included in the report. However, the real value of this practice comes when progress is not according to schedule - then your communication system is worth all the effort you invested in its planning. And communication is everything.
Milestones
Nile stones are needed to scrutinize your development. They are essentail for your team. They are short-term goals which are far more tangible than the foggy, distant completion of the entire project. The milestones maintain the momentum and encourage effort. They allow the team to judge their own progress and to celebrate achievement throughout the project rather than just at its end.
There are two ways to construct milestones:
1. Take the timing information from the work breakdown structure and sequence diagram: This is the simplest way. When you have guesstimated how long each sub-task will take and have strung them together, you can identify when each of these tasks will actually be completed. This is simple and effective.
Drawback: It does not have creativity.
2. Construct more significant milestones: This is the second method. This can be found by identifying the stages in the development of a project which are identifiable as steps towards the final product.
Sometimes, they cut across many parallel activities. Eg: A prototype of the eventual product or a mock-up of the new brochure format.
These are simply the higher levels of your structure. Eg: The completion of a market-evaluation phase.
Uses
If you are running parallel activities, this type of milestone is particularly useful since it provides a means of uniting the people together on disparate activities. They are useful because:
1. They all have a shared goal. That is the common milestone.
2. Their responsibility to each other is highlighted here.
3. Each can provide a new perspective on the others' work.
4. The problems to do with combining the different activities are highlighted and discussed early in the implementation phase.
5. You have something tangible which your team can celebrate and which constitutes a short-term goal in a possibly long-term project
6. It provides an excellent opportunity for quality checking and for review.
7. You have something tangible which senior management can recognize as progress.
Conclusion
There are milestones and there are mill-stones. If this arises then either you have chosen the wrong milestone, or you have failed to communicate how it fits into the broader structure. You will have to be sensitive to any belief that working for some specific milestone is hindering rather than helping the work forward.
