162 Project Management
What Are You Actually Controlling?
At this point, you’re probably saying, “OK, so I should be
focused on the end point of the project and I should be trying to
‘get back on track’ and minimize variances. But the end point of
what? Get back on whattrack? And whatkind of variance are
we talking about?” All good questions.
The answers to these questions will take us back to the dis-
cussion in Chapter 2 about the dimensions of project success.
The most fundamental measure of project success relates to
meeting the agreed-upon targets in each of these dimensions.
These are the targets that you promised to meet at the begin-
ning of the project; these are the targets that you should focus
on controlling.
Two of the targets pertain to the consumption of resources:
- Schedule: Was the project completed on time? (How
long did we take?) - Cost: Did the project come in at cost? (How much did
we spend?)
The other two targets are tied to the deliverables of the
project: - Functionality: Do project deliverables have the expected
capability? (What can they do?) - Quality: Do the deliverables perform as wellas prom-
ised? (How well can they do it?)
As far as many organizational managers are concerned, the
ideal end point occurs when a project meets these four targets
exactly as promised. Although “beating targets” is often charac-
terized as desirable, hitting targets provides a level of pre-
dictabilitythat most organizational managers value. The first
two targets (schedule and cost) often get the most attention;
hence the very common phrase “controlling cost and schedule.”
Sometimes, however, controlling cost and schedule gets too
much attention and deliverable performance is not as closely
monitored as it should be. This is a major oversight, one that
you should concentrate on avoiding. We’ll examine methods for