Introduction
Project management control is more than the act of regulation or governing the particular project, It involves project management intelligence as a fundamental to the development of effective controls, since they attempt to assure the leadership of a business to its predetermined project management objectives. For scientists and engineers working on the AMDS, it is important to recognize monitoring and controlling principles and methods.
Main body
The training program will involve clear assessment of the project risks and possible methods to monitor and predict these risks. In projects, control encompasses the monitoring of project management activities to see if plans are being carried out; the analysis of project management performance in terms of standards and objectives; authority, force, or coercion to guide project management to the achievement of objectives; and constraining and regulating decisions and actions (Pickett, 2001). A project management-control system contains realistic standards against which Project management performance can be assessed.
It also includes project management intelligence about current levels of achievement, an assessment and evaluation of project management performance, recommendations for adjustments and realignments of resources, standards, or both, and the power to institute recommendations (Burkun, 2005).
In nuclear projects, controls are dependent on information. Because of the spans of time, distance, and authority, management cannot personally manage all activities. For example, it is impossible to evaluate the performance of all scientists spread over a widely diversified geographic area, management must rely on information from reports to evaluate the efficiency of performance and determine whether adjustments are necessary (Pickett, 2001).
The utilization of PCs and information technology is an effective tool for providing more up-to-date and adequate information for project management control. In this respect, the management of a project is becoming more like the management of a research project, with the control of information becoming increasingly significant and Project management control assuming an increasing proportion of the project management manager’s time.
The necessity of achieving more efficient project management operations, making better Project management decisions, and developing more economical methods of distributing goods implies effective control. To be responsible for a variety of project management activities, or to be given responsibility for a profit center, implies that the project management manager must control all the activities involved. But although control implies integration, coordination, and direction of decentralized activities through the systematic measurement, appraisal, and readjustment of performance, it does not mean centralization (Frame, 2002).
Project management monitoring is intertwined with planning. Without a plan there is nothing to monitor, and without control, project management plans probably cannot be realized. Inseparable components of project management, both use many of the same tools, such as project forecasts and budgets (Pickett, 2001).Project management control is complicated by the impact of external factors and the existence of multiple goals.
Since project management organizers have ambiguous, competing, multiple objectives rather than single, unmistakable goals, and since these goals form a hierarchy, one should also expect a hierarchy among controls (Burkun, 2005).
The team of scientists should recognize that monitoring may be differentiated on the basis of their scope and importance. As with plans, for instance, there are strategic, functional, and tactical controls. Strategic monitoring evaluate and adjust Project management objectives, directions, plans, and the total project management mix. Functional monitoring relates to adjustments in the functional areas, such as sales management, that are also longer range and broad in scope. Tactical monitoring, more minor and immediate, adjusts such matters as advertising schedules or package design (Frame, 2002).
The very need for project management control arises from the requirements of the project management operation to manage change effectively. The adjustment of corporate effort to meet the demands of the marketplace, or the balancing of corporate resources with market potential, is the essence of control activity.
Project management control serves the end of redirecting and reshaping project management effort in order to maximize a firm’s impact and profitability. It is the area of corporate activity through which the resources and actions of a company make the most of changing project management opportunities. It is also the means for overcoming deviations from objectives, goals, and standards, for resolving inter[subsystem conflicts, and for achieving greater efficiency (Burkun, 2005).
The training program will teach scientists and engineers that a total project management control system has two major components: a monitoring process and an adjustment process. Monitoring results from the generation of project management intelligence and the use of criteria of project management performance. It attempts to check, evaluate, and ascertain whether performance quality is within proper limits (Frame, 2002). It is designed to search for symptoms that indicate that Project management operations must be directed, realigned, or rebuilt. Sometimes monitoring is performed through a project management audit.
It continuously gathers information about such aspects of project management activity as costs, and the profitability of products, customers, and territories. In so doing, it assesses the effectiveness of salesmen in terms of quotas, number of calls, and volume; it ascertains the efficiency of various types of distribution channels by volume and profit ability; and it determines the cost of different techniques of storing and handling inventories, which it evaluates against established or implied standards. Based on assessment of performance, some realignment of the project management program may be made.
Adjustment implies power — the power to control. Servo-mechanism theory provides a means for analyzing and improving control systems, for measuring the efficiency with which feedback information is used, and for determining the costs of system response time in terms of computers. This thinking is reflected in the electrical engineer’s notion of control. Engineers view the control function in terms of the current state of a system, a desired state, the number of periods in which the desired state is to be reached, and the “driver” necessary to get the system there (Frame, 2002). The driver in Project management may be thought of as the Project management mix or part of it.
Information, particularly feedback, is a significant part of any Project management-control system, for the quality and quantity of knowledge available are fundamental to control performance. Feedback presents a way of shaping Project management by taking into account the results of past performance and learning from it the actions to take in the future (Burkun, 2005).
Conclusion
In sum, the Project management risk management and control system has an external and an internal aspect. Control deals here with the progression of raw materials to finished products, and with such project management correlates as the product specification and package design necessary to develop customer, and ultimately consumer, utility through brand and product lines that satisfy wants and needs of the nuclear project and safety concerns.
References
Burkun, S. (2005), The Art of Project Management. O’Reilly Media; 1 ed.
Frame, J.D. (2002), The New Project Management: Tools for an Age of Rapid Change, Complexity, and Other Business Realities. Jossey-Bass.
Pickett, K. H. S. (2001). Internal Control: A Manager’s Journey. Wiley.