LINC: Learning in Community Tracking and ControllingYour Project

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LINC Learning in CommunityTracking and
ControllingYour Project
Projects not only require planning, but
tracking and control of the project as well.
You have to be like a bloodhound on patrol,
checking for and following the scent of any
potential trouble to its source.
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Learning Objective To understand how to track
and control your project, interpret your
findings, and learn the truth

• Outline
• First Draft (Final Report)
• Poster Session info
• Discuss tracking and controlling your project
• Lecture Submission 12

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NOTE There is a Change in Schedule
First Draft of Final Report, worth 50 points, is
due one week later, in class, Tuesday, April 26
(not April 19).
BRING X1 copies of report where X number of
team members. This is worth 25 of the 50 points.
Remaining 25 points will be grade earned from PA
using Grading Sheet.
LECTURE SUBMISSION Each person will read the
report of another team and give a critique of it.
The critique will be your Lecture Submission for
April 26.
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A GREAT POSTER ...

• Is easily read no fonts smaller than 20 points
• Is visually interesting colorful, creative
• Has a focal point have only 11 seconds to grab
  audience, need punchline
• Flows logically

Poster session is Thursday, April 28, in First
Floor, Eng. Hall
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Each Poster will have standardized info to help
viewers with understanding.

•  Each poster should include space for an 8 ½ X
  11 card which will include the following
  information
• the title of the project
• the name of the partner organization,
• the person(s) at the organization who serve as
  the primary contact(s),
• the project assistant, and
• the names of the student team members.
• Ann Finnegan will make up the card which will be
  available on the day of the poster session.
  Please e-mail the above information to Ann
  (abfinngn_at_uiuc.edu) by Monday, April 25.

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Your poster will be graded by your PA and at
least one other person. They will be looking for
the following.

• 1. ___/ 30 points Can the audience get the main
  message in a matter of 11 seconds? Does the
  poster help the audience clearly understand the
  following in a way that uses an appropriate
  balance between images and text?
• the problem or background statement
• project objectives and scope
• activities, work, methodology employed, or
  results,
•   
• 2. ___/10 points Is the poster well-organized,
  attractive, creative, and sensitive to a variety
  of learning styles?
•  
• 3. ___/ 10 points Is the poster staffed at all
  times with at least one team member who provides
  a brief oral summary and is responsive to
  questions?

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Tracking and Controlling are done so that you
dont get off track,run off a cliff and
CRASH
!
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Project Managers (PMs) must not See no evil,
Hear no evil, Speak no evil

• PMs need to
• see the potential for missing the objective,
• hear about the risks, and
• speak about the likelihood of failure before it
  actually occurs.
• BE PROACTIVE.

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Project Control is the set of activities you
perform to ensure that your project stays on
course. These are done throughout the life of a
project and should be done at least monthly and
perhaps more often if needed.
Reconfirm the plan Implement the plan Assess
performance Take corrective actions
Report
Plan
Italics means its not a part of controlling a
project
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Remember the Plan/Do/Reflect Spiral, a central
portion of the Project Management process?
Reflect (analyze, control)
Plan
Do (execute)
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The planning documents youve already created for
your project become the foundation for your
project tracking and monitoring.

• You can use
• Your Gantt Chart (time baseline)
• Your Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) (performance
  baseline)
• A cost baseline which shows actual expenses v.
  expected (initial budget)

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Interpreting a Tracking Gantt Chart
Activity/Event
Progress report as of June 30

• Design

• Initial Design Completed

• Final Design Completed

• Develop

• Development Completed

• Conduct Test

• Test Plan Completed

• Final Test Completed

Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept
Oct
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Performance baseline table can be created from
the Work Breakdown Structure and Gantt Chart.
Quality monitoring is more subjective and
requires that you determine early how you will do
the monitoring and what standard you will apply.
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What are some strategies for efficiently checking
project status?
Identify critical path Monitor activities with
small slack time Is it a high risk
activity? Have you had problems with this in the
past?
Monitor tasks frequently. Why?

• Failure to do so,
• allows people to lose focus.
• provides more time for small problems to become
  big problems (remember Godzilla).

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Once you discover that your project is late, what
should you do about it? That depends
Is it on the Critical Path?
If not, heres where advance warning is
advantageous. If you know well enough in
advance, you can perhaps partial turnover of
work product find slack in later tasks and
use it
Is time your driver?
If no, can likely keep current plan. Even if yes,
may be small enough deviation to not worry about
or it may require renegotiation of subsequent
tasks.
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Should you always replan when you find youre off
schedule?
Not necessarily. Re-planning is costly in terms
of time and effort and should not be done every
time youre a bit off schedule.

• Do Re-plan when
• Imposed Changes/Scope Creep have changed your
  baseline so that the benefits outweigh the costs
• Circumstantial/Environmental Changes make it
  impossible to complete the task

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Lecture Submission 12 All about teams.Heres
another team clip, this time from Toy Story 2.
Indicate good and bad elements of teams that you
observe.
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PLOT RECAP
Andy heads off to summer camp, leaving the toys
behind to fend for themselves. Woody discovers
that he is a valuable collectible spawned by a
popular 1950s kiddie-puppet TV show, "Woody's
Roundup Gang," when he is kidnapped by an evil
toy collector, Al McWhiggin. Al plans to sell him
to a Japanese toy museum. When we join this
clip,the rest of the original toy troupe is
beginning a thrilling crosstown adventure to
locate their kidnapped friend and restore him his
rightful owner.