Monitoring and Controlling Essence
Project monitoring and control is the group of actions that should be considered as a crucial part of project management (Kerzner, 2013). The experts underline that monitoring and control provide the required portion of understanding of how a project should be organized, which plan deviations can be expected, and what corrective actions are appropriate. In other words, monitoring and controlling the project during execution is a crucial step that helps to consider the uniqueness and temporary nature of any project and think about the implementations that are accessible.
Projects can be of different size and nature. Still, to make any kind of work successful, it is very important to have a department that takes responsibility for the current state of affairs and the evaluation of benefits that can be achieved (Flannes & Levin, 2005). The monitoring and controlling stage of project management should be properly identified in order managers and employees can know when and why some implementations are necessary. Any project should be measured, and monitoring is the method that can be used to identify the required measurements that are not harmful to the project and the team.
The success of Monitoring and Controlling
It is hard to define the level of success monitoring and controlling a project can achieve because this stage has a kind of continuous nature. This process begins as soon as the project is offered and ends after the final products of the project can be observed. It is wrong to stop monitoring and controlling the activities, decisions, and ideas of the project. The success of this stage can be defined only after the benefits of the work are identified.
Taking into consideration the experience got during the project (the production of a new apparel line of T-shirts for graduate students), it is possible to understand if monitoring and controlling the project is successful after the final produced T-shirt is sold to students, and considerable benefits can be observed. The team should prove that all possible risks and challenges can be identified before they can influence the working process, and the most successful solutions are made to improve the ideas and the work. The success of monitoring and controlling stage can be observed if consumers and employees are satisfied with the results achieved.
Challenges of Monitoring and Controlling
Due to the fact that monitoring and controlling a project is an important stage of project management that cannot be ignored, a project manager, as well as other members of a team, should be ready to cope with the challenges and difficulties of this process. The challenges can be of different types. For example, the project manager can face a technological challenge. It means that there is a necessity to control the project with the help of special programs and devices. However, an unpredictable failure or breaking takes place, and the manager loses the opportunity to observe how the project is carried out. Organizational or personal challenges should be mentioned. It may happen that several employees have different points of view on how the implementation should be offered. Personal conflicts or lack of communication can challenge the process of monitoring and controlling a project.
In general, even if some challenges or misunderstandings take place, it is necessary to monitor and control the project all the time. This stage helps to overcome the challenges, make effective decisions, and promote successful completion of the project according to the deadlines set.
References
Flannes, S. & Levin, G. (2005). Essential people skills for project managers. Vienna, VA: Management Concepts.
Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. New York City, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.