ENGG2111 Lecture 3: ENGG2111 Week 3
2 Sep 2018
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WEEK 3:
Execution:
Kick-off meeting:
- “Once the planning phase is concluded, the project enters the ‘development’ phase of the
typical, linear project lifecycle” (APM, 2012, pp. 26–27), which puts the plan into action
- The development phase typically starts with a ‘kick-off’ meeting. Martin and Tate (2001,
p.66) suggest that ‘the kick-off meeting sets the tone for the entire project’
- The key objectives of a kick-off meeting are to:
1. communicate that the project is underway, what its scope and objectives are and how the
work is articulated in activities, to produce deliverables and reach milestones
2. build team buy-in and start the process of relationship building among project team and
other stakeholders
3. set responsibilities in terms of commitment in the project, respect of the project schedule
and meeting attendance.
- Possible order of events: organise, present project tasks, empower teammates, define
communication modes, and summarise
Monitoring the project:
- Once the project has been initiated, a project manager’s key tasks are to monitor the project
progress, the plan, and intervene with control actions if necessary.
- For each activity, the project manager should collect information on:
1. Its progress
2. Time required to reach the progress
3. Commitment of resources to reach the progress (hours, expenses, human resources etc.).
The difference between budget and actual amount spent should be noted.
- Project managers also lead and manage the project team, provide regular checks on what
the team are doing against what they are supposed to be doing (Connor, 1993) and
communicate with the stakeholders
- Successful monitoring of a project depends on the flow of information, so it is important to
have systems in place to make sure that you get feedback on what is happening
- The project team should also meet regularly to review progress; monitoring becomes more
dynamic and changes to the plan can be achieved by consensus
- Research has moved from the idea of determining the ‘best’ form of communication to
looking for patterns of communication that seem to be the most effective
- Chudoba and Maznevski (2000) found that the ‘effective’ teams were distinguishable by a
‘temporal rhythm’ to their communications over time.
- The ‘effective’ teams adopted appropriate communication media in relation to the
complexity of the communication: email for the least complex, then telephone for the next
most complex, and face-to-face meetings or conference calls for the most complex
interactions.
Data sourcing:
- Data, such as human resources, time, materials, equipment etc. used is required to keep
the team on track
- Schedule:
1. Dates that each completed activity are started and finished
2. Dates that each activity are started, current progress, and estimated completion time based
on data
- Cost:
1. Labour hours logged for each activity (completed or underway), and hour costs paid
2. Any amount spent to date for materials and equipment or other resources
- Meetings are the main conduit of current information on the project and should be
conducted on a regular basis.
- Heerkens (2002, p. 165) suggests project meetings should focus on three groups of activity
updates;
1. Recording actual results of completed activities
2. Thorough review and analysis of the condition of each activity currently underway
3. Thinking about the future by asking for information on the predicted outcome of each
activity and the estimated dates of completion.
- Project members can fill in forms and templates based on the project schedule and mark up
the progress of the activities under their responsibility – report the hours of work spent, any
other costs, and eventual issues and problems.
- Many experienced project managers make a point of ‘walking the project’ to keep in touch
with the day-to-day issues that emerge as work progresses, as relying on others for all
information can mean that early signs of difficulty are missed.
Tracking costs:
