How Do You Control a Project?

That project caused a lot of pain and discomfort for senior management, facility management, and the facility. This was a serious case of an out of control project which leads to the question of “How Do

You Control A Project?”. In theory, it’s quite simple, you;

1. Define the scope
2.Budget and plan the execution of the scope
3.Execute the scope per the plan
4.Control the scope
5.Manage the budget variance

As you know, scope is the single most important variable in defining & controlling the cost of a project. As the with the above project, not planning and developing the scope lead to their downfall.
It’s Difficult! Like you, I know in practice developing the scope difficult to do. However, when it comes to managing a project, it’s “garbage in equals garbage out.”

Scope wrong = estimates wrong.
Scope wrong = schedule wrong.
Scope wrong - resource allocations wrong

The wrong scope can cause a lot of difficulty and discomfort to a project manager. I didn’t like it when I started out, so I took steps to successfully develop scopes for various size projects. So if you
are suffering the pain and discomfort from scope definition problems, and you want to sleep well at night, You need to put in the time, money and effort in determining your total scope.