Control Cycle

According to Wysocki (2012), there are many challenges to keeping a project running smoothly, but as a project manager for Pizza Delivery Quickly, your main concern is about monitoring the established metrics that can alert a project is heading for distress. The project manager must be able to analyze the situation, revise the goals, evaluate the different options and be able to revise the plan as needed. Metrics can facilitate the tracking system, which is essential for evaluating the current project performance level. A cutting edge tracking system serves as a gold standard benchmark or key indicator of the level of progress for the entire project. It is also important to note that the schedule performance index is one of the most widely used metrics for tracking

Step four in management planning is the selecting of goals believed to be most appropriate and feasible by the managers. Step five implements the goals and plans into action by managers. Goal achievement is likely to be linked to the organization’s reward system to encourage employees to achieve the goals and implement plans properly (Thomas S. Bateman, Scott A. Snell, 2009). Step six is essential in making sure goals and plans are met. If the goals and plans are not monitored and controlled managers would not know if they were ever met successfully.

Step-1: Determine the purpose of the meeting: Before a meeting takes place, the purpose of the meeting should be determined. All the participants should be informed about the purpose of meeting beforehand, so that they come prepared and can contribute more.

- Cost Variance (CV): The Cost Variance indicates a value which is a measure of how much the project is either overspent or underspent at any given point in time. For any given point in time, once the EV and AC are known the CV can easily be calculated. The formula for CV is quite simply: CV = EV – AC. Here a positive value indicates that the project is under spent at the current point in time and a negative value would indicate the opposite that a project is over spent at the current point in time. The Cost Variance at the end of the project is calculated as follows: CV = BAC – AC. The same above rationale is applied to positive and negative numbers to indicate if the project is under spent or over spent respectively.

| a) Using the traditional method of assessing project performance, we would be able to see if we have been over or under budget and timelines, and we would only have this information once the project has been completed. However, with the traditional approach would not be able to effectively track project performance at a task level and at any given point in time. Due to this, decisions that may need to be taken during the project or identifying issues or project health during project execution is more difficult using traditional approaches than using the EVM process. b) The EVM process is based on tracking the schedule and cost performance at a task level on an on-going basis, that will help determine project task level and overall status with effective indicators that would help make project related decisions. In the EVM process, a baseline plan is made for project costs and timelines and then these are tracked against actual costs and work completion to find out the cost variances and schedule variances and cost and schedule indexes, that will help determine how the project is performing on these parameters. If the variances are in negative or if the indexes are less than 1, it means that the task or the project is behind on cost and schedule and

The earned value analysis has led to see the project will control the actual budget, which is $18,000. The actual cost at the period 4 totaled to be $7,050, and total of earned value at period 4 is $7,750. The estimate at completion for typical is $22,550. These variances show that this project will exceed the original budget of $18,000, so we are still exceeding the project’s original budgets. The SPI is less than a value of 1, which means that the project will also over schedule and activity plans. The requests immediate actions from the third-party company.

All goals must be measurable to then measure the progress towards the successful outcome, to measure progress is to monitor and access success and achievement.

Once we have our project underway and our budget and schedule set, a project manager needs to be able to check their status compared to their cost and schedule. They do this using earned value management (EVM) principles. EVM is “a mechanism that can determine how much work was accomplished for the money spent.” (Venkataraman & Pinto, 2008, p. 111). This allows the project manager to see not only if at a current point in the project they are on schedule, but on budget as well at that point and estimate out the rest of the project. In the EVM area there are three main values that a project manager must know. First the planned value (PV), this is the amount

After setting the entire project to 40% complete on Oct 1, 2008 we can see that the project is behind schedule. The schedule variance of the entire project is $ (736,599) and Schedule performance index is at 0.68, which indicates that for every $1.00 spent in the project we are only getting $0.68 worth of work done. Since we do not have actual cost data, the MS Project calculates the budget is under budget by a negligible $80.

The Measurement Construct utilized in the Riordan Project is based on the adherence to estimate. Accurate project estimation is crucial in keeping project costs down and stakeholders happy. The Key Performance Indicator project managers want to minimize is expressed by the formula [(E-A)/E], where E = estimated Value to complete project and A = actual Value used to complete project. Project managers can substitute any value into the equation, such as hours or cost, to determine adherence to estimate. This will allow the project management team to spot trends early on during the project and then make the necessary adjustments.

The control portion of the marketing plan identifies the criteria for evaluating the company’s performance and progress toward its goals and the metrics for evaluating the environment in which the company operates.

We used PV (planned Value), AC (actual cost), and EV (earned value) to calculate SPI (schedule performance index), SV (schedule variance), CPI (cost performance index), and CV (cost variance). Among these indicators, SPI and SV show whether a project is behind schedule or not, and CPI and CV indicate whether a project is under budget. Therefore, the statuses of the schedule and cost of technical infrastructure, software customization, and combined projects can be easily and clearly checked, respectively.

‘’Cost performance on project s often poor, what are the possible causes of this and how can it be improved?’’

Cost variance is calculated by subtracting budgeted cost for work performed from actual cost for work performed and schedule variance is calculated by subtracting budgeted cost for work scheduled from budgeted cost for work performed. The vice president’s analysis that the project’s costs are overrun is correct and it appears they are also behind schedule. I would agree with the vice president’s analysis that improvements need to be done to keep the cost and schedule under control.

3. Decision-making. The process of control is complete when corrective actions are taken. This involves making right decisions as to what types of follow up actions are to be taken. This will lead to accomplishment of organisation objectives. According to W.T. Ierome, "Control is needed both to simplify the making of subsequent decisions and to ensure the realisation of the objectives implicit in the original long-range policy decisions" .