ABSTRACT
As the opening quote above professes, we must know all aspects of our project before we can expect to direct and manage it. Knowledge of a project can come through direct observation, experiential knowledge base, or statistical inference. The basic philosophy of project control is to not leave anything to chance. Preemptive and proactive actions provide the best bets for project control. It is instructive to adopt a relevant Latin phrase when approaching project control: Spera optimum para pessimum, which literally translates to “hope for the best, prepare for the worst,” and serves as a direction to a single person such as a project team member. To direct the phrase to a group such as a project team, the proper wording is Sperate optimum parate pessimum.
