The project management monitoring and controlling starts as soon as a project begins. Monitoring and controlling project work is the process of tracking, reviewing, and regulating the progress in order to meet the performance objectives. It is the fourth process group in Project Management. From the perspective of Knowledge Management Area, this involves the management tasks, such as tracking, reviewing, and reporting the progress of a project. Moreover, this process is majorly concerned with:

• Measuring the actual performance against the planned performance
• Assessing performance to determine whether or not any corrective or preventive actions are indicated, the status is reported and/or appropriate risk response plans are being executed.
• Maintaining an accurate, timely information base concerned with the project output and its associated documentation till project completion
• Providing information to support status reporting, progress measurement and forecasting
• Providing forecasts to update current cost and current schedule information
• Monitoring implementation of approved changes as they occur

Inputs

The inputs to the process of project monitoring and controlling are:

1. Project Management Plan (2^nd process of this knowledge area)
2. Schedule Forecasts (Project Time Management)
3. Cost Forecasts (Project Cost Management)
4. Validated Changes
5. Work Performance Information
6. Enterprise Environmental Factors (EEF)
7. Organizational Process Assets (OPA)

Tools and Techniques

The tools and techniques for this process include:

1. Expert Judgement
2. Analytical Techniques
3. Project Management Information Systems
4. Meetings

Output

Following are the outputs of monitoring and controlling project work:

1. Change Requests
2. Work Performance Reports
3. Project Management Plan Update
4. Project Document Update

Analytical Techniques

There are different types of analytical techniques that are applied in project management to forecast potential outcomes based on possible variations of project or environmental variables and their relationships with other variables. Some of the analytical techniques, which are most commonly used, are:

• Regression Analysis
• Grouping Methods
• Casual Analysis
• Root Cause Analysis
• Forecasting Methods (e.g., time series, scenario building, simulation, etc.)
• Failure Mode and Effect Analysis
• Reserve Analysis
• Trend Analysis
• Earned Value Analysis
• Variance Analysis

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