Making a Party out of Project Management: Chapter 7 - Setting Up the Party at the Park

Project Monitoring and Controlling

After sleeping hard all night from all the work she had done, Abby awoke to the start of Nathan’s 10^th birthday. Her eyes shot open and she sprang out of bed, both nervous and excited to get to work as soon as she could. Quickly getting ready and having just enough breakfast to feel ready to tackle the day, Abby wasted no time getting to work on the remaining tasks for the party. She let her friends know that she was on her way to the park with a wagon full of decorations and other supplies to be set up.

With her team soon helping to set up at the park, Abby oversaw their work and provided feedback as needed, going between the kitchen and the house several times to check on food and cooler prep and the setting up of tables and decorations at the park a few blocks away. As project tasks continued to be completed by all her helpers, Abby kept comparing how their pace of work was going against the schedule she had planned. By ensuring that work continued on schedule and on budget, taking corrective actions to get back on schedule or budget when needed, Abby performed monitoring and controlling project work.

While ensuring the play areas and games were ready for the party, Jason asked about marking lines on the ball field to make it fancier for Nathan and his friends. He had some time to spare and was experienced in this from his job as the school’s football field groundskeeper.

“That would look really cool, Jason,” said Abby. “But we don’t have any spray paint, and I don’t have any money to spare in the budget to go buy any. If we bought some spray paint and did the work of drawing field lines when that wasn’t part of the project plan, that would be scope creep.” She went on to explain to him how scope creep is a major cause of project failure, as more and more scope keeps getting quietly added to the project plan without official change requests and approvals. The result of this is that there is more work to be done than there is time or money to get it done with.

Abby pulled up her project management plan and reviewed the schedule baseline, zooming in on the part for the activities she needed to review next. She gathered work performance data by comparing what tasks were complete to what was expected to be done by then. For example, how many food items had been made versus the number planned? From this and other work items, Abby was able to estimate a rough schedule performance index (SPI) calculation to tell if the project was running on schedule. The SPI is a fraction of the total value of project tasks that have been accomplished divided by the total value of tasks that should be done by that time. An SPI of less than one means the project is running behind, and an SPI of more than one means the project is running ahead of schedule.

While it wouldn’t be good enough to handle a large project in a professional setting, Abby had been able to use a spreadsheet program on her tablet as project management software to create and monitor her project’s schedule. She had project activities listed down the rows, with marks to show when they were to start and when they were to finish, even listing the dependencies so one task wouldn’t start before its predecessors were all done. Thanks to having produced this over the course of her project planning earlier, Abby now had a handy way to monitor and control the schedule for the rest of the project.

Sample set of project activities Abby managed in her spreadsheet program.

What Abby did in reviewing the rate of a task’s progress, noticing anything was not quite according to plan, and redirecting her team to address the discrepancy is a process known as controlling schedule. By Abby controlling the schedule (and similarly for scope and cost), it’s not that she is micromanaging her team, she is just comparing actual schedule, scope, and cost performance to the planned performance and adjusting the focus of her team’s effort as needed to get back on track. Abby also reviewed her other plans to ensure that they were updated as needed based on the adjustments she made in response to schedule variances. A variance is a difference between what was planned and what was the actual result. She also made notes about the adjustments to refresh her memory if she were to reference them in a future project, adding more data to her collection of organizational process assets.

Abby kept an eye on everything going on as the party was being set up. She had thought about some risks and wanted to ensure that she stayed on top of anything that might come up. Pulling up her risk register, she scrolled through her highest priority risks and went down the list. There were some clouds and a chance of rain later, but the sky still looked nice for now. Brian from the party shop had just arrived and was starting to set up the bouncy castle, so she would have to check on that soon…

“Ouch!” she heard Benjamin exclaim while he was hanging a banner on the picnic shelter. “I got a sliver in my finger. Does anyone have tweezers for taking this out?”

Everyone was concerned and looked for a way to help, but Abby sprang in prepared with her first aid kit! Even though the sliver was small, she was able to get it out with the tweezers in her kit, and she also cleaned his finger with some rubbing alcohol and put on a bandage with a little antibiotic ointment. She successfully employed the risk response she had planned in case anyone had a minor injury while working on the project.

“Alright, Benjamin, you’re all set if you want to keep working. Otherwise, I think we’re getting everything done fast enough that you can take a break if you’d like.”

“Thanks for offering, but I just have a little bit left to do here. Why don't I just keep going?”

“Thank you for continuing to help, but you should wear these work gloves that my dad loaned me in case someone might need them,” said Abby.

With Benjamin’s sliver taken care of, Abby continued to review her other high priority risks. The garbage cans were in a good spot and the food items had been chilled with ice and covered tightly as they were set on the serving table. Dad had the meat in a cooler of ice and had the meat thermometer ready to use. It seemed like the big risks were being addressed well. The party was set to start soon, and Abby’s big concern now was a good turnout from Nathan’s friends. And the scary thing about this risk was that there wasn’t anything she could do to control it. She simply had to accept this risk.

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While Abby was at the party shop the day prior, she saw a five-pound bar of milk chocolate and was reminded of how much Nathan loved the little chocolate squares in the kitchen cupboard. She texted her mom to see if the money to pay for this huge chocolate bar could be added to the budget since Nathan loved chocolate so much.

“Sure!” her mom cheerly texted back with a big smile emoji.

Making this change request and getting sponsor approval is an example of controlling costs. Controlling costs doesn’t always mean saying no to spending any extra money. There might be a convincing reason to spend more money than originally planned. It’s just that changes to the budget need to be controlled by explaining the reason to the people in charge of the budget.

After recalling this event, Abby decided it was a good time to review her budget spreadsheet and the earned value management (EVM) metrics to see how her project was turning out.

Put planned versus actual budget spreadsheet, including the approved chocolate bar variance.

Basic project financial health calculations. A cost variance > 0 and a CPI > 1 mean spending is within budget.

While Abby was reviewing her risks and costs, Brian had finished setting up the party package that Abby had purchased. With the bouncy castle up, it was time for Abby to do what is called control procurements. She pulled up her procurement management plan on her tablet and went to her checklist of vendor provided items, which would be used to make sure everything from the party shop was in place and ready as planned. There were some specific items in the order receipt and the rental agreement that comprised the contract with this vendor; reviewing the checklist of specific requirements that she had for this vendor is what’s known as a procurement performance review.

First, was everything set up on time? She had told Brian when she ordered that she needed it all set up fifteen minutes before the party would start and would pay for that setup time. The party was still about twenty minutes away, so this requirement was met.

Some items from Abby’s procurement performance review checklist.

Next, Abby wanted to perform a quality check, also known as an audit (another word for inspection), by trying out the bouncy castle herself. Brian showed her how much pressure the bouncy castle had and how that compared to the pressure that was normal for bouncy castles. It was a little higher than average, but still within the green area of the gauge that represented the recommended pressure range.

“Looks like you’ve pumped the castle up all the way. If you don’t mind, I’d like to try it out before my brother and his friends get here.”

“Sure, no problem. I made sure there’s enough pressure to give them good air when they bounce,” Brian told her.

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After trying some flips and tumbles in the bouncy castle, Abby got back to work and pulled up her project management plan to review communications. She had planned this out earlier, informed everyone about what they needed to know to start work, and now she needed to review how communications went and make any necessary adjustments. This is called controlling communications. It’s not about controlling what gets communicated, it’s evaluating how well communications are happening versus the plan and making changes to communications as needed. What’s working and what’s not?

Once again, Abby continued marking tasks complete as they were finished, and she texted her parents from the park or gave them in-person updates at home to keep them up to date. She also got a few questions that were posted on the issue log – her food team was coming back from one last trip to the house but first needed help finding a few extra food containers, the new bottle of mustard, and a tub to hold any dirty dishes that would need washing after the party. Abby and her team kept working through the plan and communicating together as updates or new issues needed to be shared back and forth.

With party preparations progressing rapidly, Abby wanted to review how relationships with the stakeholders were going again. She kept everyone informed about how things were coming and checked around to see if anyone needed anything they didn’t already have. After checking with everyone, Abby took a moment to consider if there were any new or missed stakeholders she should add to her register, but she ultimately decided that her list of stakeholders was still thorough and comprehensive.

Abby had various stakeholders who had different levels of influence and interest in the project, and she had to interact with them accordingly to manage any impact they might have on the project, as well as how the project might impact them. This is the essence of managing stakeholder engagement. Responding to how the stakeholders interact with the project as compared to the plan is slightly different from initially engaging them, and this is called controlling stakeholder engagement. It’s not controlling what the stakeholders do, but rather it’s taking action to bring the relationship between stakeholders and the project back into alignment with the plan for how they should relate, as called for in the stakeholder management plan.

A simple example of controlling stakeholder engagement would be how a few of Abby and Nathan’s cousins showed up bummed out to not see a movie that was coming out in theaters that day. They had looked forward to seeing this movie for the past month, and they were neutral, if not resistant stakeholders about coming to the party today. How did Abby get them back to being supportive stakeholders? She knew that her cousins really liked chocolate covered peppermints, so after checking with their parents, Abby offered to take them to the movie the next day and buy one for each of them at the theater if they just had fun and stopped worrying about missing the movie during the party. Next thing she knew, Abby’s cousins were having fun chasing after each other in a spirited game of tag around the park's jungle gym.

Next post in the series: Making a Party out of Project Management: Chapter 8 - It's Time to Party!