The concept of monitoring a project is important because without proper monitoring, a project can go off schedule or off budget, and by the time it comes to notice, the situation may be too serious to correct, resulting in project failure.
There is a difference between monitoring and hovering, or micromanaging. Successful project managers recognize the value of entrusting portions of the project to qualified individuals and rely on periodic updates, and the knowledge that their team will alert them if something goes wrong.
For this discussion, consider the following scenario:
You are a long-term project manager at a company (you select the company and industry), and you have a team assigned to you that you did not get to select individually.
At least one team member has a history of poor performance, while another team member has been calling in sick multiple days each month and showing up late several times each week. A different employee has a bad habit of gossiping, and blurted that one of the team members was going through a nasty divorce and was not coping well. The project is critical to the ongoing success of the company and is for one of your biggest clients.
The loss of that client would cause serious financial hardship and possibly result in downsizing or the company closing. The following items have just occurred in the project in addition to the employee behaviors listed above: The schedule is behind by two weeks due to faulty parts delivered to manufacturing.
While the situation was caught early, the equipment is running at full capacity and the production schedule is two full weeks behind schedule.
The loss due to the faulty parts described above, has caused the project budget to run over by several thousand dollars, since all the products made with the faulty parts were unable to be sold or salvaged. Each item is a total loss.
The company is entering the spring and summer vacation season, and several team members have scheduled vacations and days off of work. Respond to the following: Prioritize the issues with personnel and project attributes listed above, as to which are most urgent.
Develop a strategy for addressing the issues listed above. If your strategy is not to address an issue, that too must be clearly stated. Also, include reasons as to why an issue is to be ignored for the moment.
Share your plan for monitoring and controlling the project with the project team, including boundaries to ensure you do not micromanage the project or people.