Project Management Controls

These criteria have been adapted slightly from those specified by C/SCSC (Cost/Schedule Control Systems Criteria). C/SCSC has been used by the US government for almost 30 years and have been adopted by Australia and Canada as well. These criteria have not been changed in substance in that time.  In 1998, C/SCSC was updated slightly  and a new standard (ANSI/EIA 748-1998) introduced.  

The criteria may be met in many different ways. There is nothing in C/SCSC that dictates how an organization must deliver its product. NASA, for example, has designated Seven Principles of Earned Value Management.  The criteria are proven to provide

• objective reports of project status,
• numerous indicators of actual or impending cost problems, and
• significant information for projecting future project cost performance.

C/SCSC may be used by your Information group to help flesh out the SDM (System Development Methodology). This can be readily done by treating the criteria as milestones in a process and organizing and ordering the milestones to provide some structure to the process whose components are described in the SDM.

All of this may well be overkill for your project, however.  Understanding these controls and the reasons for them will go a long way toward bringing consistency and predictability to your organization

Criteria

from Fundamentals of Project Performance Measurement, Robert R. Kemps (rev. Humphreys & Associates), San Diego Publishing Company, Rancho Santa Fe, CA, 1992

Organization

1. define all project work using a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)
2. identify the organizations that will do the work
3. integrate internal management systems with each other and the WBS
4. identify those (managers) responsible for overhead costs
5. measure cost and schedule performance by WBS and organization elements

Planning and Budgeting

1. schedule the work to meet agreed upon project objectives
2. identify products and indicators of output
3. establish a budget baseline based on the agreed project cost
4. segregate budgets in terms of labor, material, other direct costs
5. identify and budget work in work packages or planning packages
6. sum work package and planning package budgets to the control account budget
7. reconcile work package budgets to underlying standards
8. minimize, segregate and control level-of-effort activity
9. establish overhead budgets at appropriate levels
10. identify management reserve and undistributed budget
11. sum baseline budgets and management reserve to the project value

Accounting

1. record direct costs in control accounts
2. summarize direct costs by WBS without allocation
3. summarize direct costs by OBS (Organizational Breakdown Structure) without allocation
4. record and allocate indirect costs to the project
5. properly allocate cost of apportioned effort
6. identify costs of units or lots produced
7. record material costs upon receipt of material or later on a basis consistent with budgets

Analysis

1. identify, monthly, at the control account level, variances between budget, earned value and actual costs
2. identify monthly, variances between budgeted and actual indirect costs
3. summarize all data by WBS and OBS
4. identify, monthly, differences between planned and actual schedule accomplishment
5. identify managerial actions taken to correct problems
6. update the estimate of cost at completion

Revisions

1. incorporate project changes in a timely manner
2. reconcile current baseline to original baseline
3. avoid retroactive changes to records
4. keep baseline tied to project value
5. report internal changes to the baseline
6. provide customer access to the records

The WBS (work breakdown structure) must be a product-oriented subdivision of the hardware, software and services required by the project. Care should be taken to make the WBS as complete and logical as possible because once the project work has begun, it is difficult to change the WBS while maintaining an audit trail.

The intersections of the WBS and the OBS are called control accounts. A control account is one or more tasks from the WBS assigned to an organizational entity. Resources are assigned to the control account. Use of the WBS and control account structure ensures integration of management subsystems within the project. Such subsystems include:

• work authorization
• budgeting
• scheduling
• accounting
• estimating

Those responsible for controlling indirect (overhead) costs must be identified and their project measurement/management mechanisms understood.

Schedule

A master schedule must exist covering the entire scope of the project. The master schedule may be supported by lower level schedules used to plan and control the actual work. The master schedule and detail schedules must be fully integrated with complete traceability between tasks at each level. The scheduling systems must be integrated with budgeting and accounting systems in order to accurately measure project performance.

The baseline schedule must be preserved at all times so that progress can be accurately tracked (and predicted). Project Management tools (such as Microsoft Project) are capable of recording and retaining a project baseline which represents the "contract" between the vendor (IS/IT) and the customer.

It is the customer's expectation that the vendor be able to report on a regular or ad hoc basis the status of the project including the likelihood of overruns in schedule or cost.

It should be clearly understood that the above described capabilities are necessary - but not sufficient - components of Project Management. In other words, if we are not meeting these criteria, we are not practicing Project Management. That is not to say that we aren't doing good things - we simply cannot call what we are doing Project Management.

Questions, Suggestions or Comments may be addressed to WhiteLake Data Management