Project Milestone 2

Over the past five weeks you have been reading about and discussing aspects of project cost management. At this point in time, you should be able to identify some issues with the management practices of your organization that detract from the organization's ability to monitor/control project costs.

For each issue, develop an issue statement that describes the issue and its impact on project cost monitoring/controlling activities. Examples might include:

Lessons learned from previous project estimating efforts are not being recorded and applied to new projects. This adds to the potential for inaccurate cost and duration estimates and a suspect performance measurement baseline.

Project costs are not recorded and tracked in a consistent and reliable manner. Project cost assessments, therefore, are suspect and may not accurately reflect the true status of the project.

Project financial status assessments are performed at insufficient intervals to plan and implement effective corrective action.

Notes:

1. Issues should be narrowly focused.
2. Provide sufficient detail to fully explain impact on project cost monitoring and controlling activities. The connection between the issue and the organization's ability to monitor/control project costs must be clearly articulated.
3. Review the Individual Project Description document in course content.
4. Remember:The PMBOK indicates the monitoring and controlling process group "...consists of those processes required to track, review, and regulate the progress and performance of the project; identify any areas in which changes to the plan are required; and initiate the corresponding changes". The process group also involves: (1) "evaluating change requests and deciding on the appropriate response"; (2) "recommending corrective or preventive action in anticipation of possible problems"; (3) "monitoring the ongoing project activities against the project management plan and the project baselines"; and (3) influencing the factors that could circumvent integrated change control and configuration management so only approved changes are implemented". (PMBOK, page 613).