Introduction

In Chapter 10, we discussed how to manage your project once work gets underway. Monitoring and measuring project performance can be a challenge, especially if you use percent complete or other less technical measurements. We ve all been involved in at least one project where everything seemed to be rolling along in the green zone and a week or two before project completion, all hell broke loose and the project suddenly was in the red zone. How do these things happen? Depending on whether you re in an optimistic or pessimistic mood, your assessment of the percent complete can change in part because percent complete is a judgement call. In this chapter, we re going to review a few more technical approaches to measuring project progress. Even if you don t plan on using them, you might find it useful to read through the material. You might be surprised to find that these are measurements you understand and could easily implement. If you choose not to read through the more technical measurements, skip to the middle of the chapter and pick up reading where we discuss common project problems and their solutions. Understanding and resolving project problems is part of keeping your project on track so you ll find helpful information in this section. It s not meant to be the definitive list of potential project problems every project is unique (by its very definition) and every project will encounter different problems. However, there are commonly occurring themes and these tend to crop up frequently...