Subtitles of the Movie

In this movie, we'll continue our review of the process groups that make up the project management lifecycle. While the PMI SP Certification Exam will concentrate on certain areas of the cycle, you'll need to have an understanding of what else occurs and what processes interact with those that we'll be looking at closely. What you're seeing is the entire picture, although in just a brief snapshot. Let's dive right into the monitoring and controlling process group. The purpose of this process group is to track, review and regulate the project performance and identify any necessary changes. For example, what variances from the actual project work exist in comparison to the project management plan? Can we correct these variances or prevent variances from occurring? These are the types of things that will take place here in the monitoring and controlling process group. There are ten processes that fall within this process group. We have monitor and control project work, perform integrated change control, verify scope, control scope, control schedule, control costs, perform quality control, report performance, monitor and control risk and administer procurements. Let's go through them in just a bit more detail, primarily focusing on their purpose. The first process to cover is the monitor and control project work process. This process is responsible for collecting, measuring and disseminating performance information and improving the processes by assessing and measuring trends. That certainly is a mouthful. In essence it looks at the project's work performance information and reports to identify if any corrective actions or changes are needed. But requested changes and recommendations aren't just implemented on request. There's an entire process of getting approval for these changes. All change requests are submitted into the next process that we'll touch on; the perform integrated change control process. Here the idea is to control factors that create change. We want to make sure that a change control board formally reviews and then approves or rejects changes with the best interest of the project in the forefront. This helps prevent things like scope creep and is meant to keep the project properly on track. Verify scope is the next monitoring and controlling process. Here the purpose is to obtain formalized acceptance by stakeholders of the completed project scope and the completed deliverables. Notice that we have a series of processes that follow with the word control in the process name. This should tell you immediately that it's part of the monitoring and controlling process group and that we're trying to control something; mainly changes within a specified area or knowledge area. First we have control scope. Here the purpose is to control changes to the scope. The PMBOK Guide considers scope changes to be a big deal and these should not happen often. Moving on, we have control schedule. We'll be covering this process closely as part of the final course of the series. Control schedule basically controls the changes made to the project schedule. This is the only time-related process that does not fall in planning. Next, we have control costs. This process controls changes made to the project budget and now one of the ways that it does this is by influencing the factors that create variance. The status of the project is monitored and the changes to the cost baseline are managed. Perform quality control comes next within the list of processes that fall in the monitoring and controlling process group. This process monitors the specific project results to determine whether they comply with the quality standards. It also identifies ways to eliminate the causes of unsatisfactory performance. Part of the results of this process will be used in the quality process that falls into executing, so you can see that several processes will occur multiple times and are dynamic. Under the report performance process, which is communications related, the project information will be collected and distributed through status reports, forecasts and progress measurements. Performance reports are an output of this process, just as the name implies. Monitor and control risk comes next. Here the purpose is to track the identified risk, execute the risk response plans, monitor the residual risks, which are those risks leftover after the implementation of our risk response plan and evaluate the effectiveness of the response plans and of the risk management processes. Certainly a lot goes on in this process. And as we've seen occur within the past two process groups, we'll end this process group with a procurement-related process; administer procurements. This process manages the procurement relationships, monitors the performance of the contracts and makes changes and corrective actions as needed. And that covers the ten processes that make up the monitoring and controlling process group of the project's lifecycle. We'll wrap up the process groups with a closing process group in the next movie.