Project Management Essentials For Dummies, Australian and New Zealand Edition

Chapter 11

Tracking Progress and Staying in Control

In This Chapter

Monitoring and reporting on the project’s progress

Preparing a communications plan to keep everyone in the loop

Checking up on spending against the plan

Making corrections to keep on track

Controlling change

With your project underway, you now need to keep your eye on the ball and ensure that your project stays on track. When you run your project, you can be very sure of one thing: It won’t go exactly to plan.

All projects experience problems, but far too many Project Managers don’t detect that things are off the plan until the deviation is severe, at which point it’s much harder, and sometimes impossible, to put right. That makes it all the more important to identify deviations from the plan promptly so that you can react quickly and make the necessary corrections.

In this chapter, we show you effective ways to monitor your project, use milestones to track progress, prepare an effective communications strategy, and ...