Control is one of the central functions of P3 management. It is concerned with performing work in accordance with delivery documents and updating them based on actual performance.

Policy

• Introduction

• The introduction will describe the background to the work and make it clear how this document relates to other relevant documents, such as the policies of the host organisation, parent programme or portfolio.

• Roles and responsibilities

• Roles and responsibilities in relation to control are very diverse. It will range from the sponsor’s responsibilities in assessing exceptions and authorising new plans to a team member’s responsibility to accurately report progress. There may also be specialist roles in assessing the impact of progress or quality control.

• Information management

• Control will generate a lot of reports including, for example, progress reports, event reports, earned value reports, issue registers and so on.
  

• Consistency is vitally important to smooth running of the control systems. The purpose and format should be described here (possibly by simply referring to standard templates that should be used).

• Assurance

• The criteria for successful control that will be used in any assurance reviews will be described here.

• Budget

• The management effort used in controlling the work is part of the cost of setting up a management team and is not costed separately. However, there may be cost associated with acquiring certain systems to facilitate control, ranging from specialist software to quality testing equipment.

• Interfaces

• The control function interfaces with all other aspects of delivery. Performance of the schedule, risk, quality, cost, change and resource functions are co-ordinated as described by this document. This plan therefore has relevance to most other management plans.

  This section will describe how the control management plan works in conjunction with the other management plans.

Procedure

• Monitor performance

• Any aspect of delivery must be controlled. Some functions will have control mechanisms defined in their respective management plans, e.g. cost control methods may well be defined in a financial management plan. Any function that does not have its own specialist controls defined should be covered here.

  This section should specify how performance data will be captured and what reports will be used to communicate progress. There should be reports that are both event-driven and time-driven covering both cybernetic and go/no-go types of control.

• Assess performance

• Various techniques for assessing performance are described in the control function. This section will specify which ones are to be used in which circumstances.

  Performance should also be judged against tolerances which may also be defined here and trigger escalation in the delivery process.

• Corrective action

• Progress will never be precisely according to plan. Different levels of corrective action will inevitably be needed. This section should describe the approach to how plans will be updated and changes communicated. It will set out the principles for escalation of issues between different levels of the management team and how these issues should be resolved.