Deviation Communication and Change Management

Discuss about the Deviation Communication and Change Management.

ATA, a small Australian Non-Government and Not-for-profit organization has come up with ta project proposal of installing 100 solar lighting system in the remote villages of districts of Quelicai, East Timor. The scope of the proposed project is preparing project plan, raising funds, beneficiaries selection and training the crew. In this essay, the focus shall be given to the cost and time monitoring and how team and CEO shall be updated about the project progress. Project control and execution goes along with the project monitor and control. Monitoring and control allows project to ensure that key deliverables such as installation plan, vendor selection, receive 100 solar lighting equipments, etc. are completed as and when planned and if there is any variation that should be reported. The monitoring works on all important components of project plan such as time, quality, cost, risk, communication and change management.

In order to ensure that there is no deviation in the budget and deadline, Earned Value Methodology is used.  Earned Value is a famous tool in the field of project management which uses information about the schedule, cost and work performance. It will then provide current status of the project. It allows the project manager to understand the current trends of the project to predict the final status of the project. The method is based on the simplified project model but it is very useful when it comes to comment on the status of  cost and time of the project (Milosevic, 1987).

Key performance metrics are defined using EVM – Resource Flow Variance (RV), Cost Variance (CV), Schedule Variance (SV), Time Variance (TV), Resource Flow Index (RI), Cost Index (CI) and Schedule Index (SI).  Key metrics being followed in this solar lighting project are as follows (Adler & Smith, 2009):

• Schedule deviation – In this metric, status can be marked as 0% completed, under progress or 100%c completed. This will help in capturing the deviation in schedule including planned start date and actual start date, planned completion date and actual completion date, number of tasks completed and number of non-completed tasks. If the value of Schedule Variance comes to be positive, it means that project is ahead of schedule and if it is negative it means that budget behind the schedule.
• Cost deviation – The allocated budget of the project is $28,000 (APM Group Ltd, 2017). In this metric, deviation from this plan can be detected. Also, it will give an overview over planned and actual project and increase or decrease in the budget. If the value of Cost Variance comes to be positive, it means that project in under the budget and if it is negative it means that budget over the allocated cost.

Along with these metrics, budget and time of the project can also be impacted by changes in project and conflicts in the project. Other techniques can be used in dealing with them. Key performance metrics can provide the total number of change request made, requested approved, requests rejected and request accepted but not approved. Metrics also provide total umber issues in the project, issues closed and issues pending.

The project manager needs to update the team and CEO about progress of the project. In this case, there will be two types of reports to be submitted or communicated to project team members and ATA management. Before the project start,  management will be sent a report mentioning the general information of the proposed project i.e. project title, secretary, author and reporting period. The next report for project CEO/management is the status report which has following content –

• Number of tasks completed,
• Number of pending tasks,
• Number of delayed tasks
• Whether the project is ahead of its time or behind its time
• Whether project is running over or under the project.
• Risk reports – This report shall contain the summary of the risk profile of the project, details of the risk which have a potential to create issues in the project such as lack of funds, non-availability of required and skilled resources, less electricity is available than required, breaking down of installed machines, and other likely risks.
• Change report – This report shall provide the number of changes in the project i.e. when a change has been recommended to made, total number of changes accepted and number of changes rejected.
• Resource work load report
• Resource per time report
• Expense tracking

Along with the management, the project manager also needs to communicate with the project team members. The team needs to be updated about their role in the project along with the project status. The first report for the team is again a general report with an overview of the project including title of project, duration of project, start date, end date and contingency plan for budget and time (La Trobe University, 2017). Second report for the project team members is the details about every team member i.e. name of the member, email address of the member, contact number of the  member, role in the project and reporting manager of the resource. There will be a weekly meeting on the project status which will provide minutes of meeting and an action plan. The action plan shall include action item which has already been done, its follow up action details, date of the next action item and responsible person for it. A communication report shall also be prepared which will provide how team members shall communicate with each other i.e. medium of communication, frequency of communication, who all will be involved in the communication, etc. Along with this, risk report is also required to be shared with team members which will include: description of risk, risk owner, contingency plan of the risk and impact on the project if left untreated (La Trobe University, 2017).

The paper explores two important strategies to make the solar installation successful i.e. reporting and monitoring. Project monitoring shall ensure that extra budget is not spent because of scarcity of funds and keep the management and team informed about the project development and its progress. Both monitoring and reporting ensure that resources are not wasted and utilized to their 100% capacity.

References

Adler, T., & Smith, W. (2009). How organisational cost reporting practices affect project management: the issues of project review and evaluation. International Journal Of Project Organisation And Management, 1(3), 309. doi: 10.1504/ijpom.2009.027541

APM Group Ltd. (2017). DEFINING RISK: THE RISK MANAGEMENT CYCLE. Retrieved September 14, 2017, from https://ppp-certification.com/ppp-certification-guide/52-defining-risk-risk-management-cycle36

La Trobe University. (2017). Video 4: Project Risks. Retrieved September 14, 2017, retrieved https://lms.latrobe.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?id=2493632&chapterid=201714

La Trobe University. (2017). Video 3: Stakeholder Engagement and Management. Retrieved September 14, 2017, retrieved https://lms.latrobe.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?id=2493632&chapterid=201713

Milosevic, D. (1987). Organizing project control systems. International Journal Of Project Management, 5(2), 76-79. doi: 10.1016/0263-7863(87)90031-7