You are implementing the planning, delivery, and execution stages of a project, and everything is going well. Or, is it really going well? Maybe it's not working out and you are not aware of it. Just planning and doing the job is often not enough. Therefore, it is inevitable that a number of measurement and monitoring processes will take place in the projects.
From the simplest, even when cooking in the kitchen, it is necessary to control the salt, appearance, taste, and temperature of the dish in certain time intervals. It is necessary to check that the pot does not burn gold, whether the dish condenses as desired. It is not possible under normal circumstances to make a good meal without doing this control.
A project manager should have an understanding of the current status of a project. This is one of the main responsibilities of both the project team and the project manager. This understanding can only be achieved by making a reliable performance assessment of a project. This way to keep the acceptable performance level, both corrective and preventive measures could be taken. Assessing the project performance reliably, helps the future project decisions to be more easily taken to the point.
Another duty of the project team and the project manager is keeping the project in the correct road. Therefore the baseline artifacts that are a part of the project plan should be compared to the actual results of the project to have an idea about the performance of the project. If any deviations from the actual plan is noticed, the appropriate response should be given to bring the project back to the track.
Many features of the measurement performance domain were discussed as a part of monitoring and controlling process group in PMBOK 6.
The main sections under this performance domain are;
- Establishing effective measures: We measure many aspects of the project. However, we also need to measure the right thing by using the right method to be able to have a good picture of the project at the hand and to be able to report right measures to the stakeholders.
- Defining what to measure: Deliverable metrics, Delivery, Baseline performance, Resources, Business value, Stakeholders, and Forecasts are the common categories of metrics.
- Presenting Information: Dashboards, information radiators and visual controls are common methods of presenting information.
- Measurement Pitfalls: Hawthorne effect, vanity metric, demoralization, misusing the metrics, confirmation bias, correlation versus causation are common pitfalls.
- Troubleshooting Performance: A project team should react before exceeding the thresholds determined.
- Growing and Improving: Continuously learning through the results of measurement actions.