ABSTRACT
With an approved plan in place, it becomes vital to control progress. This begins by ensuring that the work has been suitably packaged and delegated. Thereafter, the team’s progress is monitored to determine if there has been any divergence from the plan. The Project Manager can use a Project Forecast Report to do so at a product/deliverable level. The Project Steering Group will be concerned to know that the benefits and other measures of success forecast in the Business Case may still be realised. Each member of the project’s management team has a range of corrective options at their disposal to ensure that progress is maintained. The quality of the project’s deliverables can be scrutinised prior to formal approval, ensuring that the project leaves behind it a complement of products that facilitate the realisation of benefits. Crucially, accepting that the project exists in a changing environment, the governance allows for changes, whether planned or not, to be sufficiently assessed before any decision to address them is made. Where an agile approach to development has been chosen, many of these controls can be alternatively or additionally undertaken within each iteration.
