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3 Steps for Tracking, Monitoring & Implementing Your Strategic Plan

By Jenna Sedmak - May 08, 2019

So, you've completed your strategic planning session and crafted an impressive strategic plan for your organization. But what happens next? That's where the importance of tracking and monitoring your strategic plan comes into play. In this article, we'll explore the crucial steps to ensure your plan stays on track and leads you to success. We'll discuss the significance of establishing clear key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your strategic priorities. By consistently monitoring and adjusting your strategy, you'll have the power to drive your organization forward and achieve its goals.

The strategic planning process doesn’t end once a document is created. To successfully execute your strategy across the organization, careful attention needs to be paid to the next steps: communication, implementation, monitoring, tracking, and leadership development. 

Download our free Strategic Planning Workbook and get the help you need to structure your strategic planning process

Communication to Develop Alignment:

If you’re working within a mid-sized or large organization, chances are that all employees could not be present at the planning meeting. Most likely, your executive leadership team members or potentially key departmental leaders participated in developing your plan. 

Prior to the strategy meeting, leaders can survey their teams to get information on their team’s perspective on various organizational strengths and weaknesses, goals and directions, and other topics to be addressed in the strategy session. Stakeholder engagement is key here, as it allows leaders to incorporate the perspectives of those who will be carrying out the operational tasks to achieve your organization's strategic objectives. Following the planning session and document creation, it’s important for leaders to make sure their team understands the organization’s strategic priorities, goals, and tactics and the reasons behind them.

If staff are engaged and feel heard during the pre-planning process, they are more likely to buy into the organizational strategy and to take ownership of their departmental and individual action items. By fostering communication and buy-in , your team will be more aligned, accountable, and better equipped to make decisions that serve your organization.

Starting the Strategic Plan Implementation Cycle:

Prior to implementing your strategic plan and moving forward with your action steps, it is critical that your strategic priority areas and goals support the vision . It is also critical that each department and individual understands which goals and tactics they are accountable to deliver on. Furthermore, it is important that they are aware of project expectations and understand what success looks like. 

Related Content: What is the Strategic Planning Process Strategic Problems and how to address them  

Monitoring & Tracking Your Plan:

To best understand where you’re succeeding and where you may be falling behind, strategic plans need to be continually monitored, and goals should be regularly tracked. There are multiple ways to track progress toward your strategic goals, including spreadsheets, software, or an office whiteboard. They can be as simple or complex as you desire, but the important thing is that everyone is using the same method and frequency for tracking. 

>> Watch below : How to use strategy dashboards for tracking & monitoring your plan:

If you decide to track your strategic planning progress with a software, we recommend using a dedicated strategic planning software, like Cascade Strategy , that has been specificall y develope d for this purpose.  With various features such as task management, GANTT charts, and various metric functions, you can quickly see where you’re meeting or exceeding goals and where you might be falling short.

> Read more : You Need These 5 Elements for Successful Strategy Implementation

In addition to monitoring your plan regularly, it is important to continually develop your leadership team's skills in critical areas such as project management, values and behavior alignment, change management, and communication. Additionally quarterly strategy reviews are a great way to make adjustments to your strategy on an ongoing basis so that you can maximize what is working and address any areas of weakness throughout the year.

Within our three levels of strategy implementation programs , our strategic planning facilitators work with teams to strengthen their leadership skills and capacities so that they are better equipped to execute their strategic plans. 

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Project Monitoring and Control: Tools & Steps

Projects are divided into phases to make them more manageable. All are important, especially project monitoring. Project monitoring and control is how a project manager ensures the plan they’re implementing with the project team goes off without a hitch.

Project controlling involves a lot of steps to thoroughly monitor the project schedule, resources and costs. There are project monitoring tools, of course, but like everything in project management, there’s a process that we’ll explain.

What Is Project Monitoring and Control?

Before we get to the steps to monitor your project, let’s put the concept into context. There are five phases in the project management process: initiation, planning , execution, monitoring and controlling and closing. Project monitoring and controlling occur in tandem with the execution phase in the project life cycle.

Project monitoring and control is a project management phase that’s dedicated to measuring project performance and making sure that it adheres to what’s been set in the project plan. Project managers will closely track the progress and performance of the project, review project status, identify potential problems and implement corrective actions when required to keep the project on schedule and within budget.

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Project Dashboard Template

Use this free Project Dashboard Template for Excel to manage your projects better.

Why Is Project Monitoring and Controlling Important?

Project monitoring and controlling are so important to project management that it’s one of the five project management processes. As noted, project monitoring goes hand-in-hand with project execution to ensure that as tasks are being completed they’re staying on schedule and keeping to the project’s budget.

Besides keeping a project on schedule and avoiding overspending, project monitoring is also a great way to manage risk and avoid scope creep. By tracking various metrics, a project manager can identify risk earlier when it shows up in the project as an issue. Earlier detection means earlier mitigation. The same is true with scope creep. When changes are applied to the project, control procedures like change requests can help keep them from negatively impacting the schedule.

To neglect project monitoring and control is to leave your project in the hands of fate. Maybe it’ll all come together, maybe not. But that’s not what a project manager is supposed to do. They not only plan the project and assign the team, but they’re also responsible for making sure the team executes its tasks in accordance with the project schedule without adding unnecessary costs.

To find problems in the project, you need project management software that can monitor progress and performance as it unfolds. ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that gives you the tools you need to monitor and control projects in real time. Project managers can get a high-level view of their project by toggling over to the real-time dashboard. It automatically collects project data on metrics such as time, cost, workload and more, which are displayed in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Unlike lightweight software, there’s no time-consuming setup necessary. Our dashboard is ready when you are. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Project Monitoring Steps

Once the project manager has scheduled tasks and created a project plan that the project sponsors approve, it’s time to move on to the project execution phase . As defined above, project monitoring is done together with the project’s execution in order to make sure the project is executed as per the schedule and budget. Below are the eight steps to take to ensure that you’re properly monitoring the project.

1. Create a Project Scope Baseline

A project scope defines the expectations and requirements of the project stakeholders. It’s used throughout the project to monitor progress. A project scope baseline captures those expectations and requirements and can be used to measure the planned effort against the actual effort to ensure that the project execution aligns with the project plan. The scope baseline can be reviewed and revised during the project, but only through a formal change control process to avoid scope creep.

2. Make a Project Schedule Baseline

When your schedule has been approved by key stakeholders, save it. That’s called a project schedule baseline. That can then be used throughout the project like a scope baseline, but in this case, it’s used to compare your actual progress against your planned process. This allows project managers to track project variance and take corrective action to get the project back on track. It also helps with stakeholder communication , as they’re always interested in if the project is on schedule. A project schedule baseline is another necessary project control.

3. Estimate Project Costs and Define a Project Budget

The more accurate your project costs, the more accurate your project budget. Once you’ve submitted a budget and it’s been approved by stakeholders, the last thing you want to do is request more funds to deliver the project. There are various techniques you can use to accurately estimate costs and plan your budget accordingly. Now, you’ll want to monitor all project expenses and use change control systems to track the project costs and respond to any discrepancies. You can also make a baseline of the budget to use that to compare actual against planned costs as a way to monitor spending.

4. Use a Risk Log

One of the most important things to look for when monitoring a project is risk. During the planning phase, you can create a risk log that collects the risks you think might show up in the project. Then you can note the risk’s potential impact on the project and who’s responsible for identifying and mitigating it. You can also set priorities to help determine which risks must be dealt with immediately or if they can wait. While you’re monitoring the project, the risk log will help you stay alert for issues that are likely to impact the project, whether for good or bad. If an issue is identified, you can respond quickly and effectively.

5. Use a Change Log

Project monitoring is all about detecting change . When you do, you’ll need a change log to control it. A change log is a document that chronologically lists the changes that have been made to the project. This acts as a summary of the changes you’ve made and allows project managers to track and communicate all the changes that have occurred. This also gives project managers another communication tool to keep project stakeholders informed so they understand the changes that occurred and that they were properly managed.

6. Establish Quality Control Procedures

The importance of delivering projects on time and within budget is often discussed, but don’t neglect the importance of quality. If the product or service doesn’t meet quality expectations, it’s a failure. Quality control procedures ensure that the product or service is tested and meets the standard set in the project planning. It also works to reduce errors. Therefore, establishing quality control procedures is a key part of any thorough project monitoring.

7. Use Project Monitoring Tools

Project monitoring tools are essential for project monitoring. Project management software has many features that give project managers a window into the project, whether costs, resources or time. There are dashboards that provide a high-level view of the project’s progress and performance, detailed status reports and other types of reporting to get more information and even resource management features to track your team’s performance. Be sure to look for a project management software that has these features and is cloud-based so you get real-time data for more insightful monitoring.

8. Create Project Reports

We just touched on project reports, but they deserve more detail. Project reports provide a description of the current state of the project. Status reports capture data for a specific period of time, while portfolio status reports do the same but for multiple projects. However, there are more reports on project variance, workload and more. All reports are important to monitor the project and should be shared with stakeholders to update them on the project.

This free project dashboard template for Excel helps you track tasks, workload allocation, due dates and costs. Simply enter your project data and monitor your project’s progress at a glance.

However, project management templates for Excel can’t compete with an online project monitoring software such as ProjectManager.

ProjectManager Is a Robust Project Monitoring Software

ProjectManager is online project management software with the tools project managers want to monitor and control their projects. Our software delivers real-time data so you’re seeing the project as it is, not as it was. Plus, our collaborative platform keeps everyone connected, whether they’re in the office, in the field or anywhere in between. This facilitates communication and issues are quickly identified and resolved to keep the project on track.

Customizable Report

Dashboards are great when you need a high-level overview of the project, but when you want to dig deeper into the data use our customizable project reports . Just a couple of keystrokes generate reports on project or portfolio status, workload, variance and more. All reports can be filtered to show only the information you want to see. Not only can project managers monitor their projects, but every report can be shared in a variety of formats or printed for stakeholder presentations.

Keep Track of Your Resources

Monitoring your resources, whether that’s your team, materials or equipment, is an important part of the project monitoring process. Our resource management tools have a color-coded workload chart to easily see who’s overallocated. You can reallocate tasks from that chart and balance the team’s workload to keep them working at capacity. Team productivity helps keep you on schedule. You can also use our secure timesheet tool for more than streamlining payroll, but also to see the team’s logged hours and ensure they’re keeping to the project plan.

ProjectManager has multiple project planning views that allow everyone to work on the tool they prefer. Whether it’s the Gantt chart, kanban board, task list or calendar view, all data is updated in real time simultaneously allowing everyone to work together. We also have risk management features to help you identify and track project risk to avoid going off schedule.

ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that empowers teams to plan, manage and track their projects in real time. Our many monitoring and controlling features mean that project managers are always on top of change and managing it throughout the project’s life cycle. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

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How to Communicate, Monitor and Control the Implementation of Your Strategic Plan

• Small Business
• Business Planning & Strategy
• Strategic Planning
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Tasks in the Five Phases of Project Management

What internal factors affect communication with stakeholders, how to analyze the key success factors for plan implementation.

• Development of Business Strategies
• Five Reasons That Business Teams Fail

Strategic plans have become crucial for small businesses looking for ways to survive in an increasingly unstable global economic climate. Crafting and developing such plans is only half the battle, however. To complete the plan's objectives, a small-business entrepreneur must designate employees to perform specific tasks, which avoids duplicating efforts. However, when goals are not being met, management must remain equally willing to rethink its objectives and prepare a system to review them.

Communicate the Objectives

Communication is one of the most crucial steps after a plan is finalized, according to an analysis prepared for the U.S. Small Business Administration. To carry out new policies and procedures effectively, employees need a solid grasp of the plan's contents. Strategic plans are more likely to succeed when workers get intimately involved with the process. This concept is known as ownership. However, small business owners must also outline a realistic schedule to roll out the plan's goals and make sure that they are implemented correctly. Failure to take this factor into account can be disastrous.

Determine Employee Roles

To successfully communicate a strategic plan's objectives, management should designate employees responsible for implementing key aspects of the document. Defining roles is important to avoid duplicating efforts, or worse, neglecting tasks that need attention. One method is to pattern the implementation team after a city council-manager form of government, according to the Foundation for Community Association Research. In this model, a condominium association's board assumes the council's executive role, with the property-management team handling day-to-day oversight, just as a city manager does. Defining these roles will improve the odds of a strategic plan's success.

Reevaluate Performance Goals

Every small-business owner needs corrective measures to get plans back on track, since individual and organizational goals are not alike, the Small Business Administration's analysis notes. If management sees performance falling short of expectations, a reevaluation of the original goals may be needed. However, management must also distinguish the causes of discrepancies between actual and planned results. Tying unit- and profit-production goals to any plan's success is straightforward. However, this approach works less well for items that are harder to quantify, such as management decisions.

Review the Outcomes

Smart strategic planners assume the need for constant follow-up, as "Entrepreneur" magazine outlined in its January 2003 interview with the Subway sandwich chain's cofounder, Fred DeLuca. According to DeLuca, one key aspect of the company's growth has come from its willingness to listen to its franchisees, who get one of five seats on its system advisory council. Every four months, the group -- which also includes company representatives, codevelopment agents, and its franchisee association -- meets to share ideas. This approach allows all the company's interest groups to air concerns while working as a team.

• Entrepreneur: The Man Behind Subway's Success
• Foundation for Community Association Research: Best Practices: Report #3: Strategic Planning
• Journal of Asia Entrepreneurship and Sustainability: Ownership Motivation and Strategic Planning in Small Business
• Reynolds Consulting: Five Things to Ask Before You Hire a Strategic Planner
• University of Texas at San Antonio Alumni Association: A Shared Vision: UTSA 2016: Implementation Plan, 2008-2016

Ralph Heibutzki's articles have appeared in the "All Music Guide," "Goldmine," "Guitar Player" and "Vintage Guitar." He is also the author of "Unfinished Business: The Life & Times Of Danny Gatton," and holds a journalism degree from Michigan State University.

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Creating a Clear Path for Improved Business Performance: A Guide to Business Plan Monitoring

By henry sheykin, introduction.

A business plan is a written document that outlines the strategic vision of a business organization. It is a vital tool for setting goals, monitoring and achieving desired outcomes, and evaluating operational performance. A business plan is a roadmap for achieving success and ensuring long-term sustainability.

The benefits of having a business plan are numerous. It can be used to guide and measure performance, track financial objectives, identify risks, identify opportunities for growth, and provide a framework for informed decision-making. Having an effective business plan can help businesses achieve their goals, monitor performance, and improve efficiency.

Monitoring Performance with Your Business Plan

A business plan is a vital component of ensuring the success of your business. It expresses the goals you want to achieve, and the actionable steps you plan to take to achieve them. This document will form the framework of how you run your operations, and can also be used as a tool to monitor and improve performance.

Breakdown Each Goal

The first step in monitoring your performance is to break down each of your business plan goals. This will help you develop a plan of action and establish benchmarks that you can use to measure progress. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you can divide that goal into small, achievable tasks and devise a timeline for accomplishing them. Breaking down your main goal into smaller steps can help you stay on track and measure your progress.

Monitor Progress

Once you've broken down your goals into smaller steps, it's important to track your progress to ensure you are on track to reach your goal. Use analytics software or another tracking tool to regularly monitor your progress. This will help you identify areas of success and potential opportunities for improvement. With this information, you can adjust your strategies and processes as needed.

Adjust Processes as Needed

It's essential to continuously evaluate your strategies and processes to make sure they are effective. If you find yourself lagging behind your goal, you may need to adjust the processes you are using in order to achieve it. This could involve making changes to your operations, such as refocusing your marketing efforts or streamlining your production process. By monitoring your progress and making necessary adjustments, you can ensure that your business plan goals are within reach.

Utilize Performance Data

Your business plan is a powerful tool for analyzing and tracking performance but only if the data is accurate. Before you can begin to hone in on the key performance indicators of your business operations, you must check the accuracy of the data you are utilizing. This can be done with manual checks or automated processes.

Once you are confident in the accuracy of your performance data, you can organize it in a way that makes sense. Depending on the tracking system you have in place, this could mean categorizing by customer, product, or service. Alternatively, you could track trends by year or month. Whichever method you choose, ensure the data is organized in a way that makes sense to you and can easily be used to compare performance.

Analytics software is a great tool for monitoring performance. It helps you identify patterns in your data and can quickly show you where improvements need to be made. With analytics software you are able to track key performance trends such as customer and employee satisfaction, average sales numbers, and so forth. This powerful tool allows you to make decisions based on data-driven insights and can provide you with the information required to take your business to the next level.

Make sure data is accurate

• Check accuracy manually or with automated processes

Organize data

• Choose a method that suits tracking system
• Ensure data is organized in a meaningful way

Utilize analytics software

• Track key performance trends
• Make data-driven decisions
• Provide information to take business to the next level

Establish a Performance Improvement Plan

A Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) is an essential tool for understanding how well your business is performing and what changes should be made in order to improve success. This plan should be used in conjunction with your business plan to help achieve goals and maximize efficiency.

Set Objectives for Improvement

The first step in creating a Performance Improvement Plan is to identify what objectives need to be achieved in order to improve current performance. These objectives should be based on the mission and vision statements from your business plan and can include goals such as increasing sales, reducing costs, or improving customer service. Once objectives have been identified, you can set specific and measurable targets for each.

Determine What Resources Are Needed

Once objectives have been identified, you need to determine what resources are required in order to achieve them. This may include additional staff, materials, technology upgrades, or any other resources that are essential to success. It is important to consider human, financial and physical resources when developing a Performance Improvement Plan.

Create an Action Plan

With objectives determined and necessary resources identified, it is time to create the action plan. This plan should detail the specific steps to be taken in order to achieve each objective, as well as deadlines for completing each task. Additionally, the plan should identify who is responsible for each task and how progress will be monitored.

• Set objectives for improvement
• Determine what resources are needed
• Create an action plan

Analyzing Performance

Your business plan can help you track progress towards your goals and assess whether or not your performance is on track. By regularly evaluating the results of your efforts, you can identify areas of concern and develop strategies to improve your performance. Here are some tips on how to effectively analyze your performance:

Evaluate Results

The first step in analyzing your performance is to evaluate the results of your efforts. This involves taking an honest look at your current performance, as well as how you’ve been doing compared to your goals. By monitoring changes in your performance over time, you can get a better sense of whether your strategies are having the desired effect or not.

Identify Problem Areas

Once you’ve evaluated your performance, you should take some time to identify any areas that may need improvement. This could involve taking a closer look at specific tasks or processes that have not been performing as well as you had hoped. By focusing your efforts on problem areas, you can improve your overall performance and reach your goals more easily.

Develop Solutions

Once you’ve identified problem areas, the next step is to develop solutions that can help you improve your performance. This could involve making minor tweaks to existing processes, or completely revamping how things are done. You should also consider implementing any new technologies that could help you streamline processes and save time. Once you’ve implemented your solutions, it’s important to regularly monitor their efficacy to ensure that your performance continues to improve.

Implement Performance Improvement Plan

Successful businesses require careful planning and monitoring. Your business plan can provide you with the guidance you need to continuously monitor progress and adapt when needed. Taking the time to periodically review your business plan and check the progress towards achieving goals can help you maintain a successful and healthy business.

Having a business plan in place gives you the data you need to track performance. With performance reports, you can measure the success of your efforts and evaluate how much progress you have made towards goals. Take the time to review your performance reports and make sure you are consistently meeting or exceeding expectations.

Take Corrective Action When Necessary

When performance falls short of expectations, it’s important to take corrective action quickly. Examining your business plan and performance reports can give you the data you need to identify why the performance was not up to par. Make necessary changes and continue to monitor progress until it has improved back to expected levels.

Reward Success

Make sure to reward personnel who have performed up to or beyond expectations. Rewarding success can help motivate teams and individuals to put in the extra effort needed to achieve success. Consider offering rewards that are in line with your business plan and performance objectives.

• Monetary rewards, such as bonuses
• Paid time off
• Gift cards or tickets
• Public recognition or awards
• Non-tangible rewards, such as letters of appreciation

Using your business plan to monitor and improve performance is an essential part of successful business management. Establishing clear goals and objectives, monitoring progress and making necessary corrections, and rewarding success can help you ensure the best performance and outcomes for your small business.

Business plans are great tools to help you measure, monitor, and improve your business’s performance. Through forecasting, they can give you insight into how profits and losses may be affected by decisions and events that happen through the fiscal year. Many elements of a well-developed business plan will help you quantitatively evaluate how your business is currently performing, as well as how your performance might change in the future. With a comprehensive set of metrics and benchmarks at your disposal, you can monitor your business’s performance and take proactive steps towards achieving desired outcomes.

A properly developed business plan can provide you with the information you need to make informed decisions about your business’s goals and strategies. The regular review and updating of your business plan helps ensure that your business remains competitive and profitable. On a macro level, these reviews can help you stay abreast of long-term trends in your industry, and plan around potential changes so that you can remain ahead of the game.

On the ground level, performance monitoring and improvement can ensure that your business is improving on an individual basis. By setting up clearly defined objectives, you can remind yourself of what needs to be done in order to keep on track with the goals set forth in the business plan. Once these objectives are achieved, you can measure the success rate and make adjustments for the upcoming year.

In conclusion, the use of a business plan provides detailed and comprehensive insight into the overall performance of your business. As a result, regular review and updating of the plan will help you track progress, set objectives, and make the necessary adjustments to ensure the long-term success of your organization.

Benefits of Using Business Plan to Monitor and Improve Performance

• Gives you insight into how your business is currently performing.
• Allows you to quantitatively evaluate how your business might change in the future.
• Provides detailed and comprehensive insight into the overall performance of your business.
• Helps you stay abreast of long-term trends in your industry.
• Enables you to measure the success rate of your individual objectives.
• Helps you track progress and make the necessary adjustments for long-term success.

Final Reminder to Review and Update Business Plan Regularly

It should go without saying that businesses should review and update their business plans on a regular basis. This will help you stay on track with your goals, address any issues, and adjust plans to meet changing market trends. Don’t let your business become stagnant – review and update your plan often to ensure the long-term success of your organization.

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7. Monitoring and Controlling

7.1 what is monitoring and controlling.

Monitoring and controlling involves regularly measuring progress on a project to ensure it continues meeting objectives and addressing current organizational needs. It involves determining what corrective action is required, when it must occur, and who must do it. Monitoring should begin in the planning phase because it is easy to get off track with planning efforts. When the predictive/waterfall development methodology is used, the team is monitoring performance against the timeline, budget, scope, and quality objectives for the entire project. When an adaptive approach is used, progress within the iteration is assessed.

It is important to note that it is much easier to monitor project success on small projects. Due to far fewer team members, stakeholders, and complexities to consider, the project’s progress is more easily observed. However, on higher complexity projects that require many people, who are often spread out over different locations, project leaders are unable to use simple observation to assess progress. In these instances, it is important to have more robust tools and techniques that monitor the success of the full project team.

The project team evaluates its performance against the plans that have been developed. Every project requires a monitoring and control system. This system considers the following:

• What information is needed and how should it be collected?
• When (and with what frequency) should this information be collected?
• Who should collect and analyze this information?
• How should this information be represented from a reporting perspective?
• Who should prepare the report?
• Who should receive the reports?

Commonly collected information includes the status of the project budget and the project schedule. The work completed to date, what has yet to be completed, and the likelihood of completing the project on time and on budget are of particular interest. In addition, it is important to identify the risks and issues that require attention. Whenever possible, information technology should be used to collect and analyze the information, and distribute the reports. Different organizations require different roles to collect and analyze the project information. In organizations with a project management office (PMO), they may be accountable for progress reporting in an “end-to-end” way, meaning they would be involved from information collection all the way to report distribution. Organizational culture influences who and how progress monitoring is performed.

One of the common methods used to monitor progress is team meetings. Team meetings are highly collaborative and serve many purposes, including information sharing and team development. Depending on the nature of the project, these meetings may be focused exclusively on sharing the status of tasks underway. It is also possible for status discussions to lead to team planning. The individuals who participate in these meetings vary depending on many factors, such as development methodology in use, organizational culture, project complexity, and status of the overall project.

Project teams typically develop different reports for different stakeholders. Stakeholders who have a high interest and high power/influence will receive more information, more frequently (recall the stakeholder power/interest grid presented in Chapter 4). Depending on the priority and duration of the project, the reporting frequency could be daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

There are three different types of project reports:

• Status reports – where the project stands at a specific point in time
• Progress reports – what the project team has accomplished during a certain period
• Forecasts – future project status based on current project status and known trends

A common and simple approach to sharing project status is the stoplight. Red means the project will not accomplish its objective(s). Yellow means the project may not accomplish the objective(s). Green means the project is on track to accomplish its objectives.

Exhibit 7.1 : Example of a project status report utilizing stoplight symbology.

 The status of a project is subject to change very quickly because unexpected risks can surface at any moment and new opportunities may be discovered.

Project leaders will develop a reporting format that meets the needs of the stakeholders and quite likely includes a combination of the above types.

Experienced project leaders know that project success is much more than delivering on time, on budget, and within the defined scope and quality parameters. This is not enough. A project that fulfills those parameters while failing to address the organizational need that led to its initiation would be considered unsuccessful. This is an extremely important concept to understand as it widens the lens of what project leaders monitor and how they respond to change. This leads to an important distinction – qualitative versus quantitative monitoring.

7.2 Qualitative and Quantitative Monitoring

Qualitative monitoring , as its name implies, involves measuring quality rather than quantity. Quantitative monitoring uses metrics and indexes to assess project performance.

In the context of project management, qualitative monitoring addresses the following questions:

• Is the team delivering on the intended scope in order to fulfill the project’s objectives and organizational needs?
• Is the quality of the deliverables meeting stakeholder expectations?
• Are stakeholders engaged?
• Are project communications effective?
• Are the expectations outlined in procurement contracts being adhered to by vendors?
• Are risks and opportunities being effectively managed by the team?
• Has the team become high-performing and are individual team members meeting performance expectations?
• Are resources being effectively managed and available as expected?

Project leaders use a variety of monitoring tools and techniques. The complexity of the project is a key consideration in determining the required tools and techniques.

Scope monitoring and control

The approach taken to monitor and control scope depends on the development methodology used. The predictive/waterfall approach involves a sequential definition of requirements and scope, which then leads to solution development. This approach is commonly utilized when the organization has a clear vision of the project’s end outcome. Given this, monitoring and controlling scope occurs with the premise that scope change is not expected. Validating scope involves formal acceptance of the completed project deliverables by the project sponsor and their assigned designates. Acceptance often requires deliverable reviews where the quality of the work is inspected before sign-off is provided. It is possible that changes will be required. These changes can be a result of poor quality (which leads to re-work) or new requirements intended to improve the organizational value of the project’s outcomes. New requirements are carefully controlled. This is necessary because once solution development begins, the project’s resources, timelines, and budget were all defined with a specific scope in mind. A scope change may mean those resources, timelines, and budgets are now insufficient to deliver on the increased scope. Controlling scope in this situation requires the project team to assess the impact of the new requirement on all the project’s constraints. If necessary, the team will seek approval for additional funding, time, and/or resources to pursue the new requirement. It is important for project leaders to reserve judgement on scope changes until the impact and benefits are clearly understood. The term “scope creep” refers to the poorly controlled expansion of scope over time. This means that the scope expands, perhaps unintentionally, without an understanding of its impact on the project’s other constraints, such as time and budget. Therefore, utilizing an integrated approach for change management is a critical success factor for projects using the predictive/waterfall approach.

Projects that follow an adaptive development methodology, such as agile, view scope change very differently. Scope definition, as well as solution development and testing, occur in an iterative or incremental fashion. As new requirements are identified, they are evaluated from a cost/complexity and benefit perspective, and if worth pursuing, they will be scheduled into a future iteration. A continuous improvement mindset encourages scope definition to occur in cycles.

Quality monitoring and control

Quality is about ensuring the expectations of the project sponsor have been met. This involves ensuring the expectations of the end-user community are well understood. High quality is achieved by planning for it (proactive) rather than by reacting to problems after they are identified (reactive).

Standards are chosen and processes are established to achieve those standards in the planning phase. Project quality focuses on the end deliverables that reflect the purpose of the project. The project leader is responsible for developing a quality management plan that defines the quality expectations and ensuring the specifications and expectations are met.

In the execution phase, the project team attempts to prevent quality issues from occurring with the use of quality management techniques, such as checklists, assessments, and lean six-sigma tools. Lean six-sigma tools are focused on creating efficient and effective processes that involve error-proofing methods.

In the monitoring and control phase, the project team is reviewing the project deliverables to ensure they are ready for review and sign-off. Ideally, this review leads to deliverable acceptance. However, the team may encounter problems that they are unable to prevent. When this occurs, the team’s objective is to determine how to fix these problems.

One of the most effective ways to address a problem is to begin by understanding its root cause(s). Cause-and-effect diagrams, also referred to as fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams, are very effective for this purpose. Section 5.8 provides an example of a cause and effect diagram.

Stakeholder management

Project teams can not control stakeholders. However, they can significantly influence their level of engagement. During the planning phase of a complex project, the stakeholder register may have been created. A stakeholder register is an effective tool for keeping track of a project’s stakeholders, their relative interest in the project, and their level of power/influence over the project’s outcomes. The register provides an effective starting place for determining how to engage stakeholders. The emphasis is on keeping high interest, high power/influence stakeholders very informed of the project’s progress.

During the monitoring and control phase, the project team is looking for new stakeholders and is monitoring the engagement level of existing stakeholders.

Engagement techniques will vary from one organization to another as their respective cultural norms and values influence how individuals work together. Some organizations prefer face-to-face interaction while others prefer the use of electronic messaging and project team websites. Whatever the methods are used to engage stakeholders, it is important to keep stakeholders informed of the project’s progress and to find the right approaches for meaningfully involving stakeholders throughout the life of the project.

A project leader’s interpersonal skills are critical in stakeholder management. Some stakeholders may have become unresponsive to the project team’s requests. When this occurs, the project leader’s relationship-building skills will put to the test as they attempt to understand the stakeholder’s actions. Conflict resolution skills, such as negotiating, are vital because stakeholders are very likely to have differing priorities, and successfully navigating these conflicts can be the difference between project success and project failure.

Communications management

Communication is one of the most effective ways to keep stakeholders engaged. In order for this communication to be effective, it must be developed and delivered in ways that consider stakeholder roles and communication preferences. During the planning phase, a communication plan would be created to guide the project team’s communication efforts throughout the project. It is important for project leaders to proactively determine if the selected communication methods will be suitable for the key stakeholders. This is done by directly asking them and monitoring their responsiveness to the communication delivered. Another important way to determine if project stakeholders are well-informed is to pay careful attention to the questions they ask. Questions about project progress that have been addressed in recent project communications are a good sign that the communication techniques may not be effective for a particular stakeholder. When this occurs, it is time to revisit the communication plan and make the appropriate adjustments.

Procurement management

Monitoring procurement includes ensuring the vendors’ performance meets the agreed-upon, often contractual, requirements. The complexity of the project determines the number and type of vendors procured. This, in turn, determines the nature of the monitored activities. For instance, projects that only require supplies to be purchased externally will have much simpler vendor management processes than projects that had to outsource the completion of some of the work to external consultants.

Key tools and techniques that may be used in procurement management include inspections, audits, formal change control methods, vendor-produced performance reports, payment systems, and contract administration.

Risk management

Monitoring and controlling risks involves implementing the risk management plan identifying during the planning phase. A key aspect of this plan is often the risk register, which helps the team keep track of the project risks, triggers (early warning signs), and risk responses. Risk responses can be implemented in any phase of the project as long as documentation is kept up to date.

Many project teams established contingency plans and contingency funds to account for risks that cannot be anticipated. When these unanticipated risks materialize, the project team will determine if the contingency plans and/or funds will address these risks and, if so, they will be implemented. If contingency plans/funds will not suffice, the project team must identify workarounds.  Contingency plans and workarounds are then monitored to determine if they were effective. Additional corrective action may be required.

Resource management

Projects require labour and non-labour resources in order to produce the desired outcomes. During monitoring and controlling, the project leader is assessing the effectiveness of both types of resources.

With respect to the project team, efficient project leaders are continuously assessing the performance of the team and its members. Effective coaching and mentoring skills are essential and can be the difference between project success and failure. In addition, a project leader must sometimes make the difficult decision to replace team members when they are not able to perform as expected or the ensuing conflicts cannot be resolved. Conflict management skills are important in this regard. Proactive conflict management requires the project leader to continuously monitor stress levels in the team in an attempt to anticipate the likelihood of rising conflict. Monitoring resource utilization levels in the project schedule and staying connected to project team members are also critical activities that the project leader must perform. Lastly, many projects require people with different skills at different times. Project leaders should be actively monitoring when these skills will be required and ensuring people join/transition off the project at the appropriate times.

The availability and effectiveness of non-labour resources are also closely monitored. In some instances, faulty or ineffective equipment has to be replaced. If the scope of the project changes, new equipment and technology may be required, which, in turn, may lead to additional work in procurement management.

Monitoring and controlling is about integrating all the teams while assuring that work is being completed at a steady rate to keep the project on track. This phase is vital to the overall success of the project. Thus, requiring additional, highly-skilled resources, which is a key consideration during the planning phase.

Qualitative monitoring is also very important to the overall success of the project. Earned value management (EVM) is a key technique used in this type of monitoring and will be examined in further depth in Section 7.3.

7.3 Introduction to Earned Value Management (EVM)

Monitoring the schedule and budget during the project.

A project leader must regularly compare the amount of money spent with the budgeted amount and report this information to key stakeholders. In addition, project leaders must also compare the progress of the actual work completed with the estimated durations in the project schedule.

The value of EVM can be highlighted through a few scenarios.

Let us assume that a project leader of a medium complexity project is reviewing the schedule with their team and concludes that they are achieving the project’s milestones. The team feels they are on track as a result. Therefore, the project leader confirms the project is on track.

Is the project on track?

We cannot truly know upfront if a project is on track. It may appear that milestones are being achieved, but perhaps this is so because the external resources on the team are spending a considerable amount of time outside their regular business hours to achieve these milestones. This would only become evident if the project leader reviewed the invoices paid to date.

Now, let us assume that the same project leader is reviewing the budget with their team and concludes that the invoices received are for the expected amounts. The team feels they are on track as a result. Therefore, the project leader confirms the project is on track.

Again, we cannot truly know if the project is on track. It is possible that actual costs incurred are as expected, but perhaps the work is not being completed as planned. This would become evident if the project leader reviewed the schedule.

It is important to integrate our schedule and budget and this is the value of the EVM approach.

Reporting Budget Progress on John’s Move

John estimated that the move would cost about $1,500 and take about 16 days. However, eight days into the project, John has spent $300. John reports to his friends that the project is going well because he is halfway through the project while only having spent 20% ($300/$1,500) of his budget. John’s friend, Carlita, points out that his report is not sufficient because he did not compare the amount spent to the budgeted amount for all the activities that should be done by the eighth day.

A budget report must compare the amount spent with the amount that is expected to be spent by that point in the project. Basic measures, such as percentage of activities completed, percentage of budget spent, and percentage of material units consumed, are adequate for less complex projects, but more sophisticated techniques, such as EVM, are used for projects with higher complexity.

Let us assume John’s move was a medium complexity project, so John has decided that EVM was required to truly understand whether his project is on track.

Table 7.4.1 : Planned Value for Lunch and Packing Materials

If you sum the budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) values up to a specified point in the project schedule, you have the earned value (EV) . Due to the fact that projects occur in ever-changing environments, the amount spent on an item is often more or less than its estimated budgeted amount. The actual cost (AC) is the sum of the amounts actually spent on the items as opposed to their planned value (PV) .

Comparing PV, EV, and AC in John’s Move on Day Six

John decided to offer to buy Dion and Carlita lunch. Although this was not part of his original plan, he believed it would be a nice gesture of gratitude. He estimated lunch would cost $45. As it turns out, Dion and Carlita only wanted a nice salad. Consequently, the lunch cost less than expected. John makes a stop at a store that sells moving supplies at discount rates. They do not have all the items he needs, but the prices are lower than those quoted by the moving company. They have a very good price on lifting straps, so he decides to buy an extra pair. He returns with some of the items on his list, but this phase of the job is not complete by the end of day six. John bought half of the small boxes, all of five other items, twice as many lifting straps, and none of four other items. John is only six days into his project, and his costs and performance are starting to vary from the plan. As demonstrated below, earned value analysis provides the project with a method for reporting variations in the progress. Note: quantity of each item is in brackets in the cost column.

Table 7.4.2: Planned Value, Earned Value, and Actual Cost Note: a time-phased budget is often created to depict the project’s expenditures over time. The time-phased budget for John’s move could depict daily costs leading up to the completion of the move. The time-phased budget is created by combining the duration of the tasks with their cost. The cost of the task would be spread out over the duration of the task. However, for the purposes of this course, the table above is sufficient.

The original schedule called for spending $261.65 (PV) by day six. Based on the estimates, the value of work completed was $162.10 (EV) , but the actual cost was only $154.50 (AC).

Using the above analysis, John can now determine how far off he is from his original plans.  Let us examine how variances are determined in EVM.

Schedule Variance

The difference between planned and actual progress is the schedule variance. The schedule variance (SV) is the difference between the EV and the PV. It can be expressed as a formula:

SV = EV − PV

If less value has been earned than was planned, the schedule variance is negative , which means the project is behind schedule . Negative numbers indicate a negative situation whereas a positive variance indicates a positive situation ( ahead of schedule ).

The Schedule Variance on John’s Move

Planning for John’s move calls for spending $261.65 by day six, which is the PV. The difference between the PV and the EV is the SV.

Therefore, John’s SV = $162.10 – $261.65 = -$99.55

Since a negative schedule variance indicates the project is behind schedule, John’s move is behind schedule.

Cost Variance

The difference between EV and AC is the cost variance (CV) . It can be expressed as a formula:

CV = EV – AC.

If the cost variance is a negative number, this indicates a negative situation or quite simply, the project is over budget . If the cost variance is a positive number, this indicates a positive situation and the project is under budget .

The Cost Variance on John’s Move:

The difference between the EV of $162.10 and the AC of $154.50 is the CV.

Therefore, John’s  CV = $162.10 – $154.50 = $7.60

Since this is a positive number, John’s move is under budget.

When significant variances occur, this signals that corrective action is required from the project leader to bring the project back on track, and deliver it within the original schedule and budget. When presenting the results of EVM to key stakeholders, they are less interested in the numbers themselves and more interested in their meaning. Due to this, summarizing data succinctly is an important skill for the project leader. In addition, the project leader must be able to provide recommendations to get the project back on track.

The schedule variance provides the team with the amount of time that the project activities are behind (or ahead of) schedule while the cost variance provides the team with the amount that the project is exceeding (or not fully using) its budget. However, these variances do not provide the team with an idea of how the amounts compare to the total budget and total project duration. Let us examine the role of indexes in EVM.

Cost and Schedule Performance Indexes

Indexes measure efficiency. In the context of project budgets, the cost performance index (CPI) measures the cost efficiency of the work accomplished to date. The schedule performance index (SPI) measures the scheduling efficiency. Indexes are expressed as ratios.

The CPI uses the same variables as the CV but expresses them as a ratio. The ratio of EV to AC gives an indication of how much of the budget has been consumed.

CV = EV – AC CPI = EV/AC

The SPI uses the same variables as the SV but also expresses them as a ratio. The ratio of EV to PV gives an indication of how much of the project is completed.

SV = EV – PV SPI = EV/PV

Since indexes are a measure of efficiency, once the indexes have been calculated, we will be able to draw the following conclusions:

The Cost Performance Index on John’s Move

In the John’s move example, at the end of day six, EV = $162.10 and AC = $154.50.

CPI = $162.10 ÷ $154.50 = 1.05. Since the value is greater than one, John is more efficient than planned and, as a result, the project is under budget. This is aligned with the conclusion from the CV which was $7.60 (recall that a positive number means a positive outcome and in this case, it means under  budget). John is getting more value for his money than planned for the tasks scheduled by day six.

The Schedule Performance Index on John’s Move

At the end of day six, PV is $261.65.

SPI = EV/PV or $162.10 ÷ $261.65 = 0.62. Since it is less than one, this indicates the project is behind schedule. This also aligns with the conclusion from the SV which was -$99.55, (recall that a negative number signals a negative situation and in this case, it means behind schedule).

Exhibit 7.2 : Graph representing that the variance between PV and EV is the SV while the variance between AC and EV is the CV.

Estimated Cost to Complete the Project

Partway through the project, the project leader evaluates the accuracy of the cost estimates for the completed activities and uses that experience to predict how much money will be required to complete the unfinished activities. This is called the estimate to complete (ETC) .

To calculate the ETC, the project leader must decide whether the CVs observed in the estimates to date are representative of the future. For example, if unusually bad weather causes increased cost during the first part of the project, the same weather patterns may not be expected for the remainder of the project. If the project leader decides that the cost variance up to a certain point in the project is atypical (not typical), then the estimate to complete is the difference between the original budget for the entire project, known as budget at completion (BAC) and the EV up to that point. It can be expressed as a formula:

ETC = BAC − EV.

Estimate to Complete John’s Move

For his move, John was able to buy most of the items at a discount house that did not have a complete inventory, and he chose to buy an extra pair of lift straps. He knows that the planned values (PVs) for packing materials were obtained from the price list at the moving company where he will have to buy the rest of the items, so those two factors are not likely to be typical of the remaining purchases. The reduced cost of lunch is unrelated to the future costs of packing materials, truck rentals, and hotel fees. John decides that the factors that caused the variances are atypical.

In Section 5.5, John used the bottom-up method to estimate the total cost of the project at $661.25 (the BAC). The estimate to complete (ETC is the BAC minus the EV after 6 days.

Expressed as a formula:

ETC = BAC – EV ETC = $661.25 − $162.10 = $499.15

If the project leader decides that the CV is caused by factors that will affect the remaining activities, such as higher labour and material costs, then the ETC must be adjusted by dividing it by the CPI.

In John’s move example, if we concluded the factors leading to the CV were typical, we would adjust the ETC by dividing it by the CPI, the formula is ETC = (BAC − EV) ÷ CPI.

Adjusted ETC for John’s Move

($661.25 – $162.10) ÷ 1.05 = $475.38Since we determined the project was trending under budget with a CPI of 1.05, if we expect the factors causing the project to be under budget to continue, we expect the adjusted ETC to be lower than the unadjusted ETC. In our John’s move example, the adjusted ETC is $23.77 lower ($499.15 – $475.38).

Estimating Final Project Cost

The estimate to complete (ETC) can be used to determine the new final project cost, which is the estimate at completion (EAC) . This is done by adding the actual costs (AC) incurred to the ETC. It can be expressed as a formula: EAC = AC + ETC.

Estimate at Completion for John’s Move

The revised EAC for John’s move after 6 days is:

EAC = $154.50 + $499.15 = $653.65.

This is good news for John as his move will cost less than originally planned.

Estimating Final Project Completion Date

Let us assume John’s detailed planning work led to the conclusion that his move would take 15 days. After day six, he used EVM to determine that he is behind schedule. As noted above, the SPI is 0.62. If we assume that the lost time cannot be recovered, a simple way to predict the project’s new duration is to use the SPI as a measure of future schedule efficiency and apply it to the project’s original duration.

New time estimate = original time estimate (15 days) ÷ SPI (0.62) = 24 days

Table 7.4.4: Summary of Terms and Formulas for Earned Value Analysis — * Earned Value is the % complete (for the task) multiplied by the total planned value (for the task)

To summarize the table above:

• Extra money is allocated in a contingency fund to deal with activities where costs exceed estimates. These overruns may have been identified while creating the risk management plan. Funds are allocated in a management reserve in case a significant, unanticipated opportunity or challenge occurs that requires change of scope, but funds are needed immediately before a scope change can typically be negotiated.
• Schedule variance (SV) is the difference between the part of the budget that has been spent at a specific point in time (EV) versus the part that was planned to be spent at that point in time (PV). Similarly, the cost variance is the difference between the EV and the actual cost (AC).
• The schedule performance index (SPI) is the ratio of the earned value and the planned value. The cost performance index (CPI) is the ratio of the earned value (EV) to the actual cost (AC).
• The formula used to calculate the amount of money needed to complete the project (ETC) depends on whether or not the cost variance to this point is expected to continue (typical) or not (atypical). If the cost variance is atypical, the ETC is simply the original total budget (BAC) minus the earned value (EV). If they are typical of future cost variances, the ETC is adjusted by dividing the difference between BAC and EV by the CPI.
• The final budget is the actual cost (AC) to this point plus the estimate to complete (ETC).

Corrective action on John’s Move:

EVM is a means to an end. The end is knowing which action needs to be taken as a result of the analysis performed. For example, John’s move is behind schedule and under budget. Before any action is taken, it is important to understand the priorities of the project. In this case, John would like to be in his new home in advance of beginning his new job. Therefore, he would prioritize the schedule over the budget if a trade-off was essential. Fortunately, in his current situation, since he is under budget, he could use some of the savings he has generated to make up for the schedule delays. His first step would be to revisit his future estimates and confirm whether he should anticipate any further delays and/or cost savings. Revising his estimates based on the new information he has received in the first six days of his move allows him to maintain realistic plans.

John has options. For instance, he may decide to use the existing savings he has generated and hire an assistant to help him buy the remaining items needed. The assistant would help him get things done much faster. Since he has not generated much savings, he may decide that it is worthwhile to spend more on his move than initially planned in order to achieve his timeline objective. In this case, he would be intentionally be planning to go over budget. Since he is only accountable to himself, gaining stakeholder approval would be easy. This is often not the case, so project leaders must use effective change management processes when similar situations occur.

In conclusion, earned value management gives project teams the ability to take corrective action before it is too late.

7.4 The Importance of Soft Skills in Keeping Projects on Track

Discenza and Forman’s research identified seven common issues that may cause project failure 1 :

• Lack of focus on business value
• Lack of accountability for clear, measurable results
• The wrong methodology was used
• The customer only engaged upfront
• Project leadership failed to engage and motivate the project team
• Team members lacked access to the tools, techniques and subject matter experts required
• Inconsistent project check-ins that lack qualitative and quantitative measures

The interpersonal skills of the project leader are critical to project success. Effective and timely communication is the underlying theme.

1  Discenza, R., & Forman, J. B. (2007). Seven causes of project failure: how to recognize them and how to initiate project recovery. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2007—North America, Atlanta, GA . Project Management Institute.

Project Management Fundamentals Copyright © 2021 by Shelly Morris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Lorea Lastiri
• Jun 4, 2023

Monitoring & Control of Corporate Strategy (Importance & Implementation)

Updated: Jun 12, 2023

Table of contents

Why is it important to monitor and control strategic plans?

Who should be responsible for monitoring and controlling strategic plans, when should monitoring occur, how is the efficiency of a corporate strategy measured, consequences of failure to monitor and control strategic plans, takeaway: monitoring and control of strategic plans made easy with kippy.

Business growth and survival hinge on making strategic plans and implementing those plans to gain a competitive advantage. However, “monitoring and control” is critical to successfully implementing strategic plans.

Monitoring tells you whether the company is heading in the right direction so you know when to double down on efforts or make changes.

But how do you use monitoring and control to achieve your strategic goals and drive your organization forward? This article will answer this question.

Specifically, we’ll examine why monitoring and control of strategy is important, who is responsible for the activity, when it should occur, and more.

Monitoring and controlling strategic plans are important because it helps you evaluate progress when implementing a strategy and determine whether you need to make any adjustments .

Reaching a desired business outcome requires turning strategic plans into action via implementation. Strategy implementation involves performing a series of activities over time. While performing these activities, managers need “monitoring” to determine whether their overall strategy is unfolding as planned.

“Strategic monitoring” involves gathering and analyzing data to see whether your business is on track to achieve strategic goals, while “strategic control” involves making appropriate changes based on these findings.

For example, if monitoring reveals deviations from strategic objectives, the control process involves deciding if corrective action is needed and making changes to steer you back on track.

Monitoring also helps you evaluate the impact of unforeseen events on strategic objectives and make appropriate strategy reassessments.

The business environment is dynamic and constantly changing because of external factors like technological advancement, government policies, economic conditions, activities of competitors, changes in customer behavior, etc.

These factors can make an effective strategy obsolete when they occur, needing you to make strategy revisions to achieve desired business objectives.

For example, a business may develop a growth corporate strategy to expand into a new (relatively uncompetitive) market. But before executing the plan, a competitor can enter and capture the market. The business will then need to revise its plan to wrestle a portion of the market from the competitor.

Monitoring and control of a strategic plan are about evaluating the implementation process and reassessing strategies when needed. Thus, corporate strategy monitoring and control have elements of corporate strategic planning, which is the function of top-level executives.

Monitoring and control of strategic plans have other components of corporate strategies. Its concern is guiding the company’s future direction. It is long-term in nature and focuses on the entire strategic management process.

Thus, top-level executives are responsible for monitoring and controlling a strategic plan.

Strategic monitoring and control help a business meet the objectives outlined when its corporate strategies are formulated. Monitoring and control mainly aim to identify problems before they occur and make necessary adjustments.

Interestingly, internal and external forces start threatening the achievement of strategic goals immediately after you define them. Thus, monitoring should begin immediately after strategy formulation.

When formulating strategies and defining objectives, certain assumptions are made about the company’s internal and external environments. Before implementation, some of these assumptions may no longer hold, which means the strategy might need some revising.

Thus, immediately after formulating strategies and outlining objectives, you should start monitoring the internal and external business environment to identify issues or tactical opportunities and adapt strategies accordingly.

Monitoring and control should continue during implementation. As you translate high-level goals and objectives into specific initiatives and have employees execute required actions, you should collect and analyze data continuously to determine progress toward achieving objectives.

Implementation control can also take place via operational control systems like monitoring and adjusting budgets, schedules, etc.

A corporate strategy is efficient if it uses the resources you allocate according to your plan and delivers the expected results.

Determining the efficiency of a corporate strategy requires monitoring performance to check whether you are achieving objectives. The process includes:

Choosing the right metrics.

Setting standards (performance benchmarks) that you will measure performance against.

Comparing actual performance with standards.

Analyzing deviations.

After outlining strategic objectives, you identify what you need to measure and define your key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs will help you track your progress.

Choosing the right KPI to measure objectives can be a difficult and time-consuming process that involves drawing insights from large volumes of data and meeting with different company actors.

Using the strategy software Kippy makes the process easier. Kippy uses artificial intelligence (AI) to recommend accurate key performance indicators based on specific objectives.

Appreciating the importance of monitoring and control of strategic plans helps you understand the consequences of failing to perform these functions.

Monitoring and control help answer two questions:

Are you executing strategic plans properly and on track to achieving strategic objectives?

Have internal and external factors made your strategic plans obsolete such that you need to revise them to achieve strategic objectives?

Thus, failing to monitor and control strategic plans results in poorly executed plans or the execution of obsolete plans. Either scenario means you cannot achieve strategic objectives, leading to wasted resources, missed opportunities, and business failure.

Strategic plans will only lead to desired outcomes with effective strategy implementation. Interestingly, “monitoring and control” is key for effective strategy implementation.

Monitoring is collecting and analyzing data to measure progress toward achieving strategic objectives. It involves tracking the performance against strategic goals and monitoring the competitive landscape. Control means using findings from monitoring to make adjustments (such as revising strategies) toward achieving objectives.

You lay the foundation for effective monitoring and control by choosing the right key performance indicators for measuring strategic objectives.

Kippy is the only strategy management platform in the world that automatically generates accurate KPIs to measure progress toward your objectives. You input your objective, and Kippy will furnish you with relevant and actionable KPIs, reducing weeks of effort to mere seconds and saving you tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Kippy makes it easy to cascade your strategy to all levels of your organization, putting your corporate strategy at the heart of everything everyone does. Kippy also automates HR appraisals, making it easy to determine how employees are performing toward achieving your objectives.

Ready to employ the power of AI in the monitoring and control of strategic plans? Book a demo and see how Kippy can help.

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Guide to Project Monitoring and Control Phase of Project Management

By Kate Eby | March 8, 2022

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Monitoring and control provide project managers with real-time status reporting that informs decisions and maintains communication among stakeholders. Project managers use monitoring data to determine if work is on task, on budget, and delivered on time.

Included on this page, you’ll learn how to create a project and control plan and best practices for implementing the plan .

What Is Project Monitoring and Control?

Project monitoring and control helps you measure project performance. Use the process to look at the project plan, review project status, identify potential problems, and implement changes when necessary. This phase coincides with the execution phase of the project lifecycle.

You can use this phase to keep a project on schedule and within budget while also managing risk and avoiding scope creep. At the end of the monitoring and control phase, the customer accepts the completed project deliverables.

What Is the Main Purpose of the Project Monitoring and Control Phase in Project Management?

The primary purpose of monitoring and control in project management is to identify problems before they occur and make adjustments. These changes may require reevaluating and updating the project plan.

Alan Zucker, Founder of Project Management Essentials, LLC , who has more than 25 years of project leadership and management experience in Fortune 100 companies, identifies the purpose of monitoring and control: "Project managers regularly track performance focusing on cost, schedule, and scope. If the project is off-track, the project manager takes corrective action."

Importance of Project Monitoring and Control

Project monitoring and control are essential to completing a project on time, on budget, and within scope. Monitoring and control processes identify deviations from the project plan. Project monitoring and control ensure that performance is seamless, efficient, and on track. 

Alan Zucker describes the importance of project monitoring and control for delivering a successful project: "Project managers know that no project proceeds perfectly according to plan. We must be diligent in tracking performance to see if it meets our expectations for success. If not, we must determine what is needed to keep the project on track."

Project Monitoring and Control Process

The monitoring and control process tracks performance metrics to keep a project on schedule, on budget, and within scope. The process helps project teams discover problems before they occur. 

• Monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Monitoring KPIs keeps project deliverables on track and performance up to date. Project managers use data on timelines, budgets, and quality to enable better decisions, make changes to avoid problems, and capitalize on opportunities. 
• Monitor Change Requests: Measuring project performance data helps reveal whether the project is on track or if changes are necessary. If the project is off course, then a change request will be submitted and implemented to make a course correction. 
• Monitor Project Scope: This step helps ensure that any changes to the project scope are verified and documented. You’ll need to update any relevant documents, such as a project scope statement and work breakdown structure . You’ll also want to determine any timeline and cost adjustments that are relative to a scope increase that can cause a shift in strategy.
• Identify Risks: Ideally, risk identification should occur throughout a project; when risks arise, you have the relevant information available to make the right decision. 
• Communicate with Team Members, Stakeholders, and Clients: Maintaining regular communication keeps projects on track and helps avoid misunderstandings that cost time and money. It’s vital that stakeholders and team members receive all relevant information in a timely manner.

How to Create a Project Monitoring and Control Plan

A project monitoring and control plan integrates factors such as success, scope, schedule, resources, risk, and costs. The plan is developed during the  project lifecycle’s planning phase . 

• Outline the project. Establish scope, schedule, and budget baselines for benchmarking according to the project plan. The plan defines project goals, resources, and milestones. 
• Break down the project into subtasks or units of work . A work breakdown structure is a useful tool that project managers can use to create subtasks and manage work. This visualization helps project managers track and simplify performance and deliverables. 
• Execute the project plan, and report and analyze to identify variances. Determine if variances are acceptable and continue to monitor them. Find the cause of unacceptable variances and make adjustments.

How to Implement Project Monitoring and Control

Project managers use three to five key performance indicators to report monitoring data and define objectives to keep the project on track. KPIs must be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

• Monitor Project Parameters: The project plan will include the scope of the project and measurements for success. Project managers use KPIs to track schedule, effort, and cost and to ensure they align with the project plan. 
• Monitor Stakeholder Involvement: By positioning and communicating with the project team, management, and clients, you keep everyone engaged and on task. 
• Monitor Risk: When you complete risk assessments throughout the life of the project, you avoid issues and enable mitigating negative impacts on the project timeline and budget.
• Monitor Project Performance: Project managers use KPI dashboards to identify problems and measure work progress.
• Take Corrective Action to Control Progress: Project managers use the project plan as a baseline to control progress and track changes until resolution or the project enters the closure phase.
• Monitor and Manage Data Documentation: Documenting performance and changes in the project keeps stakeholders involved, mitigates issues, and informs future projects.

Project Monitoring and Control Best Practices

Project monitoring and control best practices require constant attention to detail. These best practices can empower project managers and teams to balance time, cost, and budget.

• Define Project Management Team Roles: Make sure that team members know the expectations and the timelines to meet.
• Identify a Point of Contact: When problems arise, there should be a dedicated person who is responsible for tracking, documenting, and monitoring any issues. 
• Determine the Frequency of KPI Reporting: When developing the project plan, decide how often you’ll conduct KPI reporting and stick to that schedule. This data is essential for monitoring and control performance.
• For schedule variance (SV), subtract planned value (PV) from earned value (EV). 
• For budget variance (BV), subtract the money spent from the planned budget for each line item and divide it by the original budget to calculate the percentage.
• For cost variance (CV), subtract actual cost (AC) from earned value (EV).
• Determine if Variance Cause Is Common or Unique: Work continues without change under expected and acceptable variance. If the variance is caused by the unexpected, identify and implement the proper change. 
• Scrutinize Change Orders: Review documented change requests with the project team to approve or reject them.
• Monitor and Control Scope Creep: Mitigate scope creep to maintain project parameters and recognize that project change may impact outcomes.
• Conduct a Rigorous Approval Process at Completion: Make sure to document and file all approvals appropriately.

Zucker adds, "Soft skills are often missed, so focus on communication and effectively maintaining stakeholder interest. Projects can benefit from a fresh perspective, and an advisory board of specialists provides oversight and guidance for project managers."

Project Monitoring and Control Techniques

Project managers depend on monitoring and control to track, review, and report on project performance. They rely on this phase to make informed decisions, avoid crises, and maximize performance and opportunities. 

Project monitoring and control techniques address three areas in project management:

• Project Plan Monitoring: Use the critical path method (CPM) to identify essential project milestones and keep deliverables on schedule.
• Project Budget Monitoring: Use earned value management to assign project tasks according to their cost.
• Project Status Monitoring: Use project status reports to standardize the reporting process and identify completed tasks, key takeaways, risks, and real-time progress.

Project Monitoring and Controlling Strategy

Successful projects require diligence and precision in monitoring and control, so having the right strategy can make all of the difference. A good monitoring and control approach looks at quality, risk, and stakeholder engagement levels and communicates all project outcomes.

These tips can help you adhere to a project monitoring and control strategy:

• Establish a cadence and well-defined process for managing change requests. 
• Tailor performance reporting to project needs. 
• Do not overburden the project team with information requests. 
• Position stakeholders where they are needed most according to their expertise. 
• Prioritize performance data that is actionable and requires a decision. 
• Take into account how decisions impact the schedule, budget, and scope. 
• Establish a transparent decision-making process and communicate and document outcomes.

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How to Monitor & Control Effectiveness of a Marketing Plan

by Elizabeth Smith

Published on 25 Jan 2019

Efficient monitoring of a marketing plan ensures that your investment is not wasted; without knowing how effective each strategy is, you may be throwing away money on useless efforts. As you plan and execute a marketing plan, build in monitoring tools from the beginning and be ruthless in eliminating strategies that are not worth the time and money you spend creating them. With a regular program of evaluation, you can end up with a streamlined, powerful marketing system.

Choose tracking tools that are appropriate for each strategy in your marketing plan. List each marketing effort that is planned for the coming year and find tools that will help you monitor its effectiveness. For web-based initiatives, look into website analytics programs like Google Analytics; for discounts, you can use coupon codes that are different for each publication in which you advertise.

Build in monitoring systems at the beginning of each marketing effort. Before you launch a new campaign, implement your monitoring tools. Put a tracking code into your website HTML code, for example, or set up a spreadsheet to monitor sales progress. Treat evaluation and tracking as an integral part of the marketing process and assign one of your marketing staff to monitoring duties.

Track the response of sales before and after the launch of a marketing campaign. Because the end goal of marketing is often to boost sales, keep an eye on how each effort impacts your sales. Ask sales staff for specific feedback on the number of qualified leads that come in after a new promotion, and request that they ask customers how they came to your company for more detailed results.

Talk to your customers. For marketing efforts that are difficult to monitor quantitatively, such as awareness-building, survey customers and members of your target audience. Send out simple email on your social media profiles, and post one on your website. Design questions that will get you specific information that relates to the success of your marketing campaign: customer knowledge of new features or awareness of environmental efforts, for example.

Eliminate ineffective marketing strategies. To make your monitoring efforts worthwhile and to streamline the marketing plan, cut programs that do not achieve their initial goals. Pay particular attention to strategies that cost a large amount of money to make sure that the return on investment is worthwhile. Pare down your marketing plan so that it contains only the most effective activities, which will make room for new efforts.

Control plan (Six Sigma) — definition and example

Project managers and business executives are always looking to optimize organizational processes. If you’re in a leadership role, you probably already know about Six Sigma, a continuous improvement framework that’s part of the Lean methodology. You may even be familiar with the five stages of Six Sigma — Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC).

A control plan is a crucial element of that last stage and is designed to standardize processes established in the four previous stages. Understanding control plans can help you make lasting process changes that improve your organization.

In this article, you’ll learn what a control plan is, including an example, so you can continue your educational journey into Six Sigma. This post will cover:

• What a control plan is

Control plan example

• How to get started with Six Sigma

What is a control plan?

A control plan is a document that provides guidance on how to monitor a process. Control plans are part of the fifth and final phase of the Six Sigma process improvement framework. They help businesses standardize newly adopted processes to increase their uptake and longevity.

Control plans should contain:

• An outline of what the process should look like
• Key variables or metrics to measure the process
• Information on how frequently to measure these variables
• What to do if the results stray from the desired outcomes

The goal of the control plan is to provide guidance so that a process can be successfully replicated over time by different individuals. Originally created for manufacturing, Six Sigma and the Lean methodology are now used in a range of industries including healthcare, education, and the service sector.

There are a variety of control plan formats, but some of the basic information would typically include the industry that the plan is for, the company’s goal, and how the sections of the plan help the company track its progress.

For example, a control plan for a manufacturing product might contain:

• The name of the product
• Its key characteristics, such as size, color, and material
• How to measure those characteristics, including the tool needed
• The acceptable range — also called the tolerance range — for each characteristic
• The testing frequency, possibly as a time period or amount
• How to visualize and evaluate the measurements, perhaps in a chart
• A specific person who will oversee quality control
• Contingencies for particular or unexpected situations

While this example is for a manufacturing product, the same structure and approach could be applied to any business process. Remember, maintaining hard-won gains is as important as making them in the first place. Project teams need to put guidelines in place to ensure processes stay efficient, for instance by creating monitoring and response plans. Process owners should then make sure process changes are maintained and kept current with best practices.

Get started with Six Sigma

Control is one of the critical steps in the Six Sigma framework because it ensures that the processes you’ve refined will be maintained into the future. Without a control plan, processes could revert back to the way they were before, resulting in a loss of essential progress.

If Six Sigma and Lean management sound like they might be right for your business, and you’re interested in learning more, check out one of the additional resources below:

• Learn about Six Sigma to Improve Workplace Processes
• Lean Project Management
• A Guide to Lean Management

Adobe can help

Adobe Workfront is enterprise work management software that can help you adopt or expand Lean Six Sigma, optimizing your workflow and bringing organization to your teams.

Take a product tour or watch the overview video to learn more about Workfront.

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-six-sigma

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/lean

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/lean-management

• Guide: Control Plan

Daniel Croft

Daniel Croft is an experienced continuous improvement manager with a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and a Bachelor's degree in Business Management. With more than ten years of experience applying his skills across various industries, Daniel specializes in optimizing processes and improving efficiency. His approach combines practical experience with a deep understanding of business fundamentals to drive meaningful change.

• Last Updated: June 11, 2023
• Learn Lean Sigma

In business it is not uncommon for processes and outputs from processes to be out of control and need action to be taken to address them. This is where Control Plans become extremely useful. Control plans have been developed to support lean Six Sigma process and quality management systems in measuring critical-to-quality (CTQ) measures of processes and their outputs to ensure they remain in control with regular data collection and clear actions to be taken to address issues if they arise. 

Control plans are mostly popularized and used within the manufacturing sector. However, they can be useful for a range of processes that output variables that can be measured and controlled.

Table of Contents

What is a control plan.

A Control Plan in its basic form is a document that outlines the process, steps and actions needed to manage, control, and ensure the quality of a process or product. Developed from the principles of Lean Six Sigma, the tool is used to many industries, such as manufacturing, logistics, automotive, and aerospace.

Control plans may vary slightly from business to business as teams and management tweak them to suit local business needs. However, the Control Plan typically consists of elements such as process input variables, output variables, control points (limits), what measurements are to be taken, and actions to be taken if a deviation occurs. 

Below you can see a good example of how a control plan may look. You can also download this control plan from our template section.

A control plan is usually a tool you will use towards the end of an improvement project, such as in the Control phase of the DMAIC methodology, and continues to serve as a “living document,” which means it is continually reviewed and updated as the process evolves or new data becomes available.

How to Create a Control Plan

Creating a Control Plan is an important process that involves several steps. The guide below will clearly explain each step to guide you through creating a robust and effective Control Plan.

Step 1: Identify the Process

The first step in creating a control plan is to identify a process that you are looking to control. This should be a process that is critical to the quality of your product or service and would have a significant impact on customer satisfaction or operational efficiency if it were to go wrong. Therefore, lend them to a key candidate of a process to control 

It is important to have a clear understanding of the flow of the process, including the inputs and outputs and all the steps involved. It can be useful to use a tool such as a flowchart to map out the process to ensure you fully understand all the elements and variables of the process. 

Step 2: List CTQs (Critical to Quality Characteristics)

Once the process has been identified, the next step in the process is to identify the CTQ characteristics. These are the key attributes or features of the product or service that need to be controlled to ensure quality. The best way to identify what the CTQs are is to understand the customer requirements, such as product specifications.

For example, let’s say a business manufactures brake pads, and the CTQ is the thickness tolerance of the brake pads; this might be ±0.5mm.

Step 3: Select Measurement Methods

Once you have listed all the CTQs that you want to control, decide how you will measure these characteristics. The method that you decide on should be accurate, reliable, and repeatable and follow the principles of Attribute Agreement Analysis (AAA). The measurement method should consider what tools, instruments, or techniques will be used. Additionally, it is important to define the frequency with which the measurement is taken and what the acceptable limits or tolerances are for each CTQ.

Step 4: Determine Control Methods

Now that you know what CTQs you want to control and the methods used to measure them you need to determine the methods of control. Control methods are the strategies, tools or techniques used to ensure that the process stays within the defined limits or customer spec limits.  Popular tools and techniques used to control processes and variables include Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts, Mistake Proofing (Poka Yoke) or Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) / Standard Work Instructions (SWI), which control method you use will depend on the type of process and CTQ identified.

Step 5: Develop Action Plans

If in the event a process or variable goes out of control it is important to take action to address and correct the process and bring it back under control. To do this action plans should be developed as part of the control plan. These action plans define what steps need to be taken to bring the process back within its acceptable limits. 

Like any good action plan it needs make it clear what action needs to be taken and who is responsible for taking that action. 

Step 6: Train the Team

Now that you have developed a control plan its important to ensure that in the event it is needed, it is used. Therefore, you should clearly communicate what the CTQs are, what the operators need to do to measure the process and clarify what actions need to be taken by whom if a process goes out of control. 

Training is key to the success of the control plan being followed.

Step 7: Implement and Monitor

Now that you have developed and trained out the plan, the next step is to officially implement it. This involves putting all the required measures and controls into place. If special tools like calipers or software’s are needed to take measurements, ensure they have what they need. The process then needs to be continuously monitored to ensure the process remains within the stated control limits. Data should then be analyzed at regular intervals to detect and trends or deviations in the process outputs.

Step 8: Review and Update

Finally Step 8, it is important to remember that the control plan is a living document that should be reviewed and updated regularly as the process or CTQs change. Regular reviews will ensure the Control Plan remains effective and relevant. 

By following this process you should be able to develop a robust Control Plan that will help you control your process and ensure quality and drive continuous improvement of the process.

Implementing a Control Plan is beneficial for controlling the quality and performance of processes and preventing defects or quality issues. From identifying the process to training your team, each step is geared towards ensuring that your business operations are as seamless as possible. The goal is not just to maintain current performance levels but to set the stage for continuous improvement.

As we’ve outlined in this guide, creating and implementing a Control Plan is a detailed process involving multiple steps, each is important and builds on the previous step. You should also remember, a Control Plan is a living document must be regularly monitored and updated to its sustain success.

• Westgard, J.O., 2003. Internal quality control: planning and implementation strategies.   Annals of clinical biochemistry ,  40 (6), pp.593-611.
• Mehrasa, M., Pouresmaeil, E., Jørgensen, B.N. and Catalão, J.P., 2015. A control plan for the stable operation of microgrids during grid-connected and islanded modes.   Electric Power Systems Research ,  129 , pp.10-22.

Q: What is a control plan?

A: A control plan is a documented framework that outlines the methods, procedures, and actions necessary to maintain process control and ensure consistent and acceptable outcomes. It helps identify critical control points, measurement methods, control limits, and corrective actions to monitor and manage process performance effectively.

Q: Why is a control plan important?

A: A control plan is important because it helps organizations maintain process stability, minimize process variations, and ensure consistent product or service quality. It provides a systematic approach to monitor, control, and improve processes, leading to reduced defects, improved customer satisfaction, and increased operational efficiency.

Q: How does a control plan fit into the DMAIC methodology?

A: A control plan is a key component of the Control phase in the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) methodology. In this phase, the control plan is developed to sustain the improvements made during the earlier phases. It helps ensure that the process remains in control, deviations are promptly addressed, and continuous improvement efforts are sustained.

Q: What are critical control points?

A: Critical control points are specific stages or activities within a process where variations can significantly impact the quality or outcome. These points need to be closely monitored and controlled to prevent defects or deviations from the desired target. Examples include temperature control, pressure control, or specific steps in a manufacturing process.

Q: How are control limits determined?

A: Control limits are determined based on historical data, customer specifications, or statistical analysis. Historical data provides insights into the process performance, while customer specifications define the acceptable range for product quality. Statistical techniques, such as process capability analysis, can help determine control limits based on the process’s inherent variation and the desired level of performance.

Q: What is the role of corrective actions in a control plan?

A: Corrective actions are specified in a control plan to address deviations from control limits or target values. These actions provide a systematic approach to identify and resolve the root causes of variations, ensuring that the process is brought back into control. Corrective actions may involve adjusting process parameters, modifying procedures, retraining employees, or conducting equipment maintenance, among other steps.

Q: Who is responsible for implementing a control plan?

A: Responsibility for implementing a control plan typically falls on the process owner or a designated team responsible for process management and improvement. These individuals or teams are accountable for monitoring the process, collecting data, analyzing it for deviations, and implementing corrective actions when necessary.

Q: How often should a control plan be reviewed and updated?

A: A control plan should be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure its effectiveness and alignment with changing process requirements. It is recommended to review the control plan during regular process performance reviews or when significant changes occur in the process or customer requirements. This helps to adapt the control plan to evolving conditions and continuously improve its efficacy.

Daniel Croft is a seasoned continuous improvement manager with a Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma. With over 10 years of real-world application experience across diverse sectors, Daniel has a passion for optimizing processes and fostering a culture of efficiency. He's not just a practitioner but also an avid learner, constantly seeking to expand his knowledge. Outside of his professional life, Daniel has a keen Investing, statistics and knowledge-sharing, which led him to create the website learnleansigma.com, a platform dedicated to Lean Six Sigma and process improvement insights.

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• Plan Monitor Control Cycle in Project Management
• Post last modified: 18 March 2023
• Reading time: 16 mins read
• Post category: Project Management

Plan Monitor Control Cycle (PMC Cycle)

The Plan-Monitor-Control (PMC) cycle is a fundamental process in project management that enables teams to plan, execute, monitor, control, and improve their projects. It is a continuous improvement cycle that allows project managers to assess the progress of their project against the project plan, make adjustments, and take corrective actions to ensure the project stays on track.

Table of Content

• 1.1 What is Plan?
• 1.2 What is Monitor?
• 1.3 What is Control?
• 2.1 Setting Objectives
• 2.2 Identifying Key Control Parameters
• 2.3 Formulating Processes for the Controlling System
• 2.4 Deploying Metrics in Processes
• 2.5 Implementing Processes
• 3.1 They Provide Direction to the Project Manager
• 3.2 They Can Be Used for Comparison
• 3.3 They Help in Taking Decisions
• 3.4 They Help With Proactive Measures
• 4 Project Metrics

Before we learn about these three vital steps to guide a project through its initial stages to the destination in IT project management, let us first define the terms plan, monitor and control separately and understand how they find important in the management of IT projects.

What is Plan?

What is monitor, what is control.

The term plan refers to determining the path, means, and mechanism to reach an aspired place in the future. Planning means visualizing the future elements and tasks at present to analyze problems and risks arising from them.

Let us understand ‘plan’ with an example. When we start serious planning over a project, what we do is bring the future into the present. How? We want to finish the project within a deadline of, say, 6 months. Once the deadline is fixed, we turn to devise the best means including resource requirements and quality assurance requirements, software requirements, hardware requirements, etc., for meeting this deadline. This way, we have already determined that the project will be completed in six months.

The term monitor refers to keeping a tab on the application and working of the means and mechanisms that were planned to be used for the project. In other words, to monitor is to oversee the associated resources, schedules, cost implications, etc.

Control, in simple words, means ensuring that the project is going forward according to the plan. If there is a deviation, the software professionals will deploy workable measures that will get it back on track, i.e., in the path as defined in the plan.

For example, suppose during the execution of an IT project, it is seen that the schedule for the development of a module is late by 1.5 months; so the controlling measures may include the induction of more resources so that the delay can be covered.

Designing a Project Control System in Project Management

Every project is required to be controlled efficiently. This is more crucial in the case of IT projects because they are carried out to create technical products. In a technical piece, even if one part does not function well or is missing, the overall work will be affected.

Hence, adequate controlling tools must be deployed to ensure that no error or negligence goes unnoticed in the project. Designing a project control system is a big activity in itself, which every project manager must conduct right at the beginning of the project plan.

The following are the basic steps of designing a project control system:

Setting Objectives

Identifying key control parameters, formulating processes for the controlling system, deploying metrics in processes, implementing processes.

By setting the objectives of a project control system, the management specifically fixes the direction concerning the requirements of the project as well as of the organization. Note that these objectives must be aligned with the business objectives of the organization. If this alignment is not there, the whole purpose of developing a project control system would be ineffective.

For example, if an IT company develops software by using .NET technology, the objectives must be set concerning the .NET system.

On the other hand, if the company sets the objective of the project control system in the PRO-IV environment (a business rule engine to deliver complex and critical software projects quickly and securely through a varied range of environments), which is not much in demand, this will defeat business objectives as the main operations of the company are in the .Net environment. Another example could be a reduction of software testing defects by 10% of the previous year at an overall organizational level.

This step involves the identification of key control parameters. Continuing with the example from the previous step, one of the key control parameters is a 10% reduction in the fatal defects in the software of the company. By establishing this parameter, project managers know their requirement that is to be controlled exactly. The classification of the defects such as fatal, minor, or major is done according to the definitions as accepted by the organizational decision-makers.

In the absence of this classification system, managers may wrongly classify a fatal defect as minor and may not take the level of action that is appropriate or required. For example, during the testing of software, a defect is observed, and the software cannot run unless this defect is removed.

Now, as per the classification criteria drafted by experts, it is a fatal defect, but the project manager classifies this defect on his/her judgment and labels it as a major defect. Will it not disrupt the smooth progress of the project and cause unwarranted delays and arguments? Hence, along with objectives, an IT project must also have its key parameters defined beforehand.

This is another important step that formulates processes required for implementing the controlling system. The process so formed must follow the Entry, Task, Verification, and Exit (ETVX) model that is widely used in the IT industry. ETVX is a framework for the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) processes or phases. Entry refers to the point at which a process comes into existence.

Task refers to a job to be executed in a sequence. Verification refers to the method of checking whether all tasks of the process have been executed. Exit refers to the stage where the process moves out of the system.

During the formulation of processes, metrics must be incorporated. Metrics refer to data that assist in the controlling of processes, and thereby, the project also. For example, in the case of project management, schedule variance is a metric that enables the project manager to take additional measures such as instructing employees to work overtime to finish the project on time.

Here, the project enters the execution mode, and the processes formulated in the previous steps are put into practice. Various metrics generated are collected and analyzed systematically, and control measures are deployed in the project execution mode.

Suppose a project that has just commenced is at the requirements stage. Hence, requirements gathering and analysis take place at this stage, and the metrics documented in the process are gathered as per the steps in the process. These metrics are analyzed, and control measures are taken in case the project is going slow or fast.

Project Control Through Metrics in Project Management

Metric is a measurement standard that helps in measuring the quality or performance of a deliverable project. Something that can be measured can be controlled. Thus, metrics are used for controlling purposes.

The importance of metrics can be listed through the following advantages:

They Provide Direction to the Project Manager

They can be used for comparison, they help in taking decisions, they help with proactive measures.

Through metrics, the project manager can easily know whether the project is behind schedule or ahead of it.

This means that the project manager will be able to compare and conclude who has efficiently done the job and who has not. For example, the manager can compare whether Joe is a good tester or Dean, as both have tested the software and the data about the number of defects of each tester is available.

With the help of metrics, taking decisions is easier, and the decisions made are more effective, as they provide objective evidence of the progress status of project execution. For example, the project manager can decide whether to continue with smoke testing or any other testing technique not as the timeline for project delivery is approaching fast.

With metrics in hand, the project manager can take proactive measures. For example, suppose the root cause analysis of reviewed defects has indicated that a lack of experience in gathering requirements is the main cause of the defects; therefore an experienced person should be deployed for this purpose now.

Project Metrics

The following project metrics are widely used in IT projects:

• Effort Overrun: This is used as a control measure to monitor effort variance in the ongoing project.
• Size Variance: This is used to determine a variance in terms of the project size concerning the initial and final estimates of the project. The size estimate can be in the form of several function points, objects, screens, reports, etc., depending on the project.
• Productivity: This is used to measure the productivity of the appointed software professionals. The productivity output can be in terms of the number of functions developed per day or the number of defects per line of code.
• Resource Utilization: This is used to measure the rate of utilization of resources employed in the project. This can be in terms of percentage also; for example, resource utilization can be 90% over a given period.
• Schedule Compliance: This is used to measure how well the planned schedule was adhered to by those for whom it was meant. For example, schedule compliance of 90% means that the project is behind 10 days assuming 100 days as the time for completion.
• Defect Density: This is used to measure the defect density of the code. For example, defect density can be in the form of 5 defects/fp.
• Test Efficiency: This is used to measure the efficiency of the testing process. It is generally 70% as per the industry, which means the testing process can detect 70% of the defects only.
• Review Effectiveness: This is used to determine the effectiveness of the review process. An efficient review process can detect and remove 80% of the defects before implementation
• .Test Coverage: This is used to determine the adequacy of the testing process. Testing is an endless process, and its adequacy can be measured only by covering a limited part of the process.
• Turnaround Time: This is used to determine the time taken to clear or rectify the reported issue or defect.
• Schwalbe K. (2016). Information Technology Project Management (Eight Ed). USA: Cengage Learning.

Best Project Management Courses

Project management skills are in demand. If you are ready to get started, consider enrolling in the  Google Project Management: Professional Certificate  Learn the job-ready essentials of project management in six months or less, such as initiating projects, risk management and change management. Also we have made list of best project management courses as there are a plethora of options available, and it can be challenging to identify the best one.

Best Project Management Tool

• Mid & Large Size Team
• Higher Plan
• Standard Feature
• Flexible Database & Stability
• Small & Growing Team
• Smaller Plan
• Standout Feature
• Try New Feature

The ideal project management tool selection will eventually rely on the particular requirements of your team. We suggest experimenting with the free versions of various tools to gauge your team’s comfort level and then proceeding accordingly.

Project Management Tutorial

( Click on Topic to Read )

• What is Project Management?
• Functions of Project Management
• What is Project?
• Project Managers
• What is Project Life Cycle?
• Project Feasibility Study
• What is Project Analysis?
• What is Project Planning?
• What is Project Selection?
• What is Project Schedule?
• What is Project Budget?
• What is Project Risk Management?
• What is Project Control?

Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)

• Best Project Management Tools
• What is Project Organisation?
• What is Project Contract?
• Types of Cost Estimates
• What is Project Execution Plan?
• Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• Project Scope Management

Project Scheduling Tools and Techniques

• Project Risk Identification
• Risk Monitoring
• Allocating Scarce Resources in IT Project
• Goldratt’s Critical Chain
• Communication in Project Management | Case Study
• Reporting in Project Management

IT Project Quality Plan

Project outsourcing of software development.

• Implementation Plan of Software Project
• What is Project Implementation?
• What is Project Closure?
• What is Project Evaluation?
• Software Project Management Challenges
• What is Project Management Office (PMO)?
• IT Project Team
• Business Case in IT Project Life Cycle
• PMP Study Guide
• What is Data?
• Big Data Management
• Types of Big Data Technologies
• Big Data Analytics
• What is Business Intelligence?
• Business Intelligence Challenges in Organisation
• Essential Skills for Business Analytics Professionals
• Data Analytics Challenges
• What is Descriptive Analytics?
• What is Descriptive Statistics?
• What is Predictive Analytics?
• What is Predictive Modelling?
• What is Data Mining?
• What is Prescriptive Analytics?
• What is Diagnostic Analytics?
• Implementing Business Analytics in Medium Sized Organisations
• Cincinnati Zoo Used Business Analytics for Improving Performance
• Dundas Bi Solution Helped Medidata and Its Clients in Getting Better Data Visualisation
• What is Data Visualisation?
• Tools for Data Visualisation
• Open Source Data Visualisation Tools
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Data Visualisation
• What is Social Media?
• What is Text Mining?
• What is Sentiment Analysis?
• What is Mobile Analytics?
• Types of Results From Mobile Analytics
• Mobile Analytics Tools
• Performing Mobile Analytics
• Financial Fraud Analytics
• What is HR Analytics?
• What is Healthcare Analytics?
• What is Supply Chain Analytics?
• What is Marketing Analytics?
• What is Web Analytics?
• What is Sports Analytics?
• Data Analytics for Government and NGO
• What is E-Business?
• E-Business in India
• What is Mobile Commerce?
• E-Business Strategies
• E-Business Revenue Model
• What is E-Commerce Software?
• What is Electronic Payment System?
• What is Payment Cards?
• What is Payment Gateways?
• Types of Payment Systems
• Security Threats in E-Business
• Online Security in E-Business
• What is Online Marketing?
• What is Website Usability?
• What is Web Advertising?
• What is E-Mail Marketing?
• What is Online Brand Management?
• What is E-CRM?
• What is E-Supply Chain Management?
• What is E-Retailing?
• What is E-Banking?
• What is Enterprise Resource Planning?
• Benefits and Advantages of ERP & Reasons for Growth
• Success Factors of ERP Implementation
• ERP Implementation Life Cycle
• Risk in ERP Implementation, Cross Function, ERP Technology
• Maintenance of ERP
• What is Business Model?
• Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
• Types of Information Systems: TPS, MIS, DSS, EIS
• What is SAP?
• Modules of ERP Software
• SAP Application Modules
• SAP R/3 System
• ERP Modules
• ERP in Manufacturing
• ERP Purchasing Module
• What is SAP Sales and Distribution (SAP SD)?
• ERP Inventory Management Module
• ERP Implementation
• ERP Vendors, Consultants and Users
• Oracle Corporation
• PeopleSoft ERP
• Edwards & Company ERP
• Systems Software Associates ERP
• What is ERP II?
• ERP Implementation at Rolls-royce
• What is MIS?
• Requirements of Management Information System
• What is Risk Management?
• Nolan Six Stage Model
• What is Cloud Computing?
• Information Systems in Organisations
• Challenges Faced by Manager in Managing Information Systems
• Decision Making With MIS
• What is E-Governance?
• What is Green IT?
• What is Smart Cities?
• What is IT Infrastructure?
• Cloud Service Models
• Cloud Migration Challenges
• Security Threats Faced by Organization
• Managing Security of Information Systems
• What is Data Management?
• What is Database?
• What is Data Warehouses?
• Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
• What Is IoT?
• IoT Design and Size & Space Considerations
• IoT Architecture
• Iot Applications
• IoT Security Challenges
• Big Data Processing Frameworks
• IoT for Smart Cities
• IoT Consumer Wearables and Application
• Smart Retail IoT
• What is Augmented Reality?
• AR Applications
• What is Virtual Reality?

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Project Monitoring and Control Plan Template

What is a Project Monitoring and Control Plan?

A Project Monitoring and Control Plan outlines the steps and processes that need to be taken to ensure the successful completion of a project. It is the framework that project teams follow to ensure that the project is on track and that all objectives are met. It can include a variety of elements, such as risk management, quality management, and cost management, and it provides a roadmap to success.

What's included in this Project Monitoring and Control Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Project Monitoring and Control Plan template for?

This Project Monitoring and Control Plan Template is designed to help project managers and teams create a plan for monitoring and controlling project activities to ensure success. The template is flexible and can be tailored to fit any project, allowing for customization to fit the specific needs of the team. The template provides guidance on setting objectives, developing measurable targets (KPIs), and implementing related projects.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

When creating a Project Monitoring and Control Plan, it is important to define the focus areas that you will be addressing. Focus areas are the broad categories that will be addressed in the plan. Examples of focus areas that can be included in a Project Monitoring and Control Plan include Risk Management, Quality Management, and Cost Management.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Once you have identified the focus areas, the next step is to set objectives that fall under each focus area. Objectives are the specific goals or targets that you want to achieve with the plan. Examples of some objectives for the focus area of Risk Management could be: Monitor Project Risk, and Manage Risk Effectively.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

Once objectives have been identified, it is important to set measurable targets (KPIs) to help track progress and ensure that the objectives are being met. KPIs are measurable targets that can be used to track progress towards the objectives. An example of a KPI for the focus area of Risk Management could be: “Generate risk log by Apr 27th”.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

In order to achieve the KPIs, it is important to implement related projects. Projects are the activities that need to be completed in order to achieve the KPIs. An example of a project related to Risk Management could be: Create a Risk Management Team.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

Once the Project Monitoring and Control Plan has been developed, the Cascade Strategy Execution Platform can be used to accelerate the results of the plan. The platform is a powerful tool that allows teams to easily track progress and ensure that objectives are being met. It also provides an easy way to make changes to the plan as needed, allowing for quick adaptation to changing circumstances.

Don't bother with copy and paste.

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Shipment Monitoring Business Plan

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NaviTag Technologies, LLC

Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.

NaviTag Technologies, LLC [NaviTag Technologies], headquartered in Massachusetts, is a start-up company founded for the purpose of creating the first location and security monitoring solution for maritime container cargo shipments.

Our solution focuses on meeting the needs of two types of customers – companies engaged in shipping cargo worldwide and the government agencies that monitor such movements.

For the first time ever, these users will be able to securely capture and act on shipment data without relying on equipment owners and/or shipping partner integrations. This is accomplished by utilizing a removable tracking device that is affixed to the exterior of a container. Throughout the containers journey, the device will report its status and positional information to an Internet accessible central database before ultimately being removed by the recipient and returned to the owner.

Such a monitoring service is not yet available anywhere in the transportation industry, and we intend to dominate this segment.

[Confidential and proprietary information has, in some text and tables, been omitted or disguised in this sample plan.]

The Concept

The mission of NaviTag Technologies is to provide shippers or government agencies a portable, reusable device that will track cargo shipments with greater accuracy than the event-based historical systems available today.

This electronic tag will track the cargo, not the container, providing the owner with the ability to choose what cargoes are monitored. It can be introduced anywhere within the supply chain to provide the security information that government agencies are seeking to protect U.S. ports from importation of dangerous cargoes.

NaviTag Technologies core revenues will be generated from the sale of these electronic tags – a NaviTag™ – as well as access charges to retrieve the information. The number of NaviTags purchased by an individual group is dependent upon the volume of shipments requiring monitoring.

Access charges are assessed to the NaviTag owner and are established on the basis on the volume of units in operation. This fee allows access to the NaviTag network and the central database containing the positional and security alert information transmitted from the NaviTag.

We have targeted the container shipping market for several reasons. As a $120 billion industry, it offers significant growth potential. The annual unit growth of the number of containers shipped averaged 8% in the 1990’s and is forecast to increase by almost 100% by the year 2010.

In the next decade, container terminals around the world are set to experience rapid growth, with global container handling throughput expected to reach in excess of 300 million TEUs 1 in 2005 and over 400 million TEUs in 2010.

Despite the growth in the container shipping industry, it still remains a very fragmented market. There are over 500 companies operating in excess of 2,500 vessels today and within the U.S. alone there are over 50,000 importing and exporting companies on record. On a worldwide basis, the number of companies engaged in international container shipments is in the hundreds of thousands.

[1] TEU – (Twenty foot equivalent unit) – an industry measurement of volume for container shipments. Containers typically are offered in twenty and forty foot dimensions. One twenty-foot container is equal to 1 TEU and one forty foot container is equal to 2 TEUs.

Jim Galley Mr. Galley is a seasoned technology professional with over 15 years of experience in management, operations, and application and product development in technology environments. As CTO and founding member of GoCargo.com, Mr. Galley brought the company from a business plan concept to processing transactions online in six weeks. Mr. Galley also has Fortune 50 financial experience as a technical officer, and has run a data center operation.

Bob Magown Mr. Magown has spent twenty years serving in senior management positions with transportation-related companies. Mr. Magown was an original member of the Internet start-up GoCargo.com and held the position of vice president of sales. For 17 years prior to joining GoCargo.com he had built a successful career with the ocean carrier CAST (CP Ships), where he fulfilled a variety of senior sales and marketing positions including regional director east coast. Mr. Magown holds a BS degree in business management from Bryant College.

Key Financials

Market research and business model development have been completed. NaviTag Technologies is seeking to raise substantial funds by way of private equity placement in order to execute its business plan, focusing on creating the electronic tag, central database, and establishing the customer base.

NaviTag Technologies offers exceptional growth opportunities. The demand within this rapidly growing market for a unique solution in the form of a portable, cost-effective cargo tracking tool is currently untapped. Our approach of empowering the shipper with control of the positional information and the development of a selective cargo alert tool for government agencies is the solution to a clearly defined need. We have the opportunity to seize this market and we intend to move quickly to establish a market leader position. NaviTag Technologies presents an attractive opportunity that is based on solid market research and industry experience. It offers current industry players a valuable service unavailable elsewhere, resulting in immediate benefits.

1.1 Mission

The goal of NaviTag Technologies is to provide accurate, timely information regarding the location and status of container cargo within the supply chain. Our purpose is to empower the NaviTag owner with control of the in-transit cargo visibility and security information, eliminating their reliance on third party equipment tracking systems.

Company Summary company overview ) is an overview of the most important points about your company—your history, management team, location, mission statement and legal structure.">

NaviTag Technologies is incorporated as a limited liability company in the state of Delaware and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The Company shareholders are founders, president – CTO Jim Galley and president worldwide operations Robert Magown.

2.1 Start-up Summary

Our start-up costs are mostly stationery, legal costs, and expenses associated with opening our offices. The start-up costs are to be financed by direct owner investment. The assumptions are shown in the following tables and chart.

2.2 Company Locations and Facilities

NaviTag Technologies currently operates from two facilities. The corporate headquarters is located at 123 Main St., Boston, Massachusetts, and is the sales and finance center for the company. Development and production are managed from our office in New York.

Products and Services

NaviTag Technologies provides a service that allows government or commercial entities to securely track their cargo movements worldwide. This is accomplished by utilizing a patent pending electronic tag – called NaviTag – to capture location and event information in conjunction with an Internet accessible central database.

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The NaviTag will provide shippers with accurate, timely information regarding the location of their shipment via modem transmissions to the central database. The shipper can access the location information at anytime through a secure Internet connection and be empowered with the information necessary to make decisions, and take required actions to support their supply chain.

NaviTag Technologies will support government agencies desire to improve security within the U.S. ports and borders. A NaviTag attached to a container on foreign soil would provide full route and location visibility to destination as well as notification of any breach in security. The authorities could then investigate the security breach and take the necessary action. For the Department of Defense, NaviTag can provide end-to-end visibility and security for all their sensitive cargo, ensuring the safety of the military personnel at the destination.

NaviTag is light, compact, and reusable making it a cost-effective method of tracking cargo and ensuring security. It is a rechargeable, self-powered device that can be easily packaged and returned to the owner providing unlimited use.

3.1 Product and Service Description

NaviTag Technologies provides a service that allows government or commercial entities to securely track their cargo movements worldwide. Our cargo tracking solution comprises of three elements, the datacentre, the activation unit and the NaviTag itself.

The NaviTag unit utilizes a low power modem that allows it to communicate from anywhere in the world. This modem, in conjunction with positional and door sensors, provides the capability to transmit positional and door open conditions on a regulated basis throughout the cargo’s journey to its destination.

The NaviTag provides this functionality in a self-contained unit at a size and price point not previously available. The NaviTag unit is about the size of a paperback novel and light in weight to facilitate return shipment.

It attaches to the exterior of the container door by means of fixed mounting arms and an adjustable securing bar that is locked in place for the duration of the voyage. It is detached at destination by entering the unlock code into the electronic keypad and following instructions in the status display window.

Once the NaviTag has been activated, it records its location and transmits positional information at an average of every four hours. The frequency of these transmissions increases as the cargo approaches its destination, and any door open conditions or tampering conditions get transmitted immediately.

These transmissions are relayed via secure means to our Datacentre where they are validated and inserted into a common data structure. Upon validation, the Datacentre will perform any global and voyage specific messaging as defined by the NaviTag owner.

3.2 Fulfillment

While the NaviTag is an important part of the cargo monitoring solution, the information and actions generated from NaviTag data are equally important.

Our solution includes a normalized database from which NaviTag owners and authorized third parties can access and integrate NaviTag data into their own business processes. Access rights to data will be closely held, and authorization routines will be implemented at the site, database and device level. Each NaviTag is centrally registered to its owner, and usage is limited to authorized parties.

Market Analysis Summary how to do a market analysis for your business plan.">

Our target markets are those shippers seeking to improve control of the cargo movement within their supply chain and government agencies striving to enhance the security of cargo in transit.

The information today is supplied independently by the multiple service providers involved and is not coordinated through a single source. To achieve end-to-end visibility, a shipper must undertake a massive data integration project with each service provider, or outsource the entire effort to a supply chain visibility company. Even then the information is historical and reliant on third party data entry that is subject to human error.

Of the total projected market of over 300 million TEUs in 2005, our efforts will be focused on those shippers with high value, time sensitive, or hazardous cargo.

We estimate that approximately 30% of the total world market would fall within this criterion, equating to over 90 million TEUs. Our security focus will be directed to those government agencies seeking to improve security of the U.S. ports involved in processing the 600,000 containers entering weekly.

With only 2% of the imports being inspected today, the concern of dangerous cargoes compromising the port operations has created opportunities for a cargo tracking/security alert device such as ours.

4.1 Service Business Analysis

We have identified three distinct opportunities within this market as having a proven need and an expressed desire to improve the visibility of cargo shipments.

• Shippers – this group has identified a need for a cargo-tracking tool that will allow their shipments to be monitored from origin-to-destination providing accurate and timely location information.
• Government Agencies – since 9/11/01, heightened awareness throughout the U.S. has led to security concerns regarding cargo entering U.S. ports. Government agencies/offices such as D.O.T., Transcom, Customs, Department of Defense (DOD), and Homelands Security have expressed interest in technology services capable of being introduced anywhere within the supply chain that provide protection against a terrorist threat from dangerous container cargoes.
• Carriers – the equipment owners are seeking an automated process of inspecting temperature-controlled containers, providing them with positional data and immediate notification of refrigeration failures allowing them to take the necessary action to avoid cargo spoilage.

4.1.1 Industry Participants

With container volume projections exceeding 300 million TEUs by 2005 and over 400 million TEUs by 2010, the market potential for this segment is significant.

Any shipper with high value, time sensitive, or hazardous cargo is a targeted customer. The container cargo that falls within this criterion would be approximately 30% of the total market equating to over 90 million TEUs per annum in 2005.

These shippers are demanding a visibility tool that will provide them with timely, reliable data regarding the location of their shipments within their supply chain. That information will allow them to manage inventory, avoid additional transportation cost (demurrage or storage charges), anticipate customer stock shortages, and reroute cargo when necessary. They require confidence in the quality of the data and the timeliness of the report to ensure correct actions are being taken.

Today’s systems do not instill this confidence because the shipper is reliant on third party, historical data. Providing historical information about where the cargo has been, based on events designated by the service provider, does not meet their requirements. The shipper is not empowered with control of the information, which limits the value of the content.

Government Agencies

The world has been forever changed since the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11/01, and the sense of security that Americans enjoyed was shattered. Security at airports, commercial facilities and government buildings has been enhanced dramatically, utilizing a variety of equipment designed to identify and restrict dangerous contraband.

U.S. ports have been specifically identified as vulnerable and potential terrorist targets and are in need of greater security measures.

U.S. government agencies and offices have allocated funds for improvement in port security, container-tracking technology, and electronic seals that detect intrusion and tampering attempts. DOD is pursuing technology that will provide accurate and timely location information as well as intrusion notification for the containers carrying munitions or supplies to military installations.

The Maritime Administration (MARAD) is allocating funds for technology that will assist in their effort to avoid the importation of weapons of mass destruction in containers through a U.S. port.

All of these agencies and offices have been targeted as potential markets for an automated cargo tracking and intrusion alert electronic seal. Preliminary conversations with these organizations, as well as MassPort Security and the U.S. Coast Guard, have been encouraging and have resulted in request for prototypes to perform field testing.

Ocean Carriers

Ocean carriers are typically the owner/lessee of the containers and chassis that are loaded by shippers for their international shipments.

Many carriers include temperature-controlled equipment in their container fleet for perishable goods such as meats, produce, chemicals and other products that require stable temperature environments. The equipment owner is responsible to ensure the unit is maintaining the required temperature and will be held responsible by the shipper for any failures that lead to cargo damage.

The carriers perform inspections of the equipment at predetermined intervals throughout the transport route; physically monitoring the operation of the refrigeration unit to confirm the required temperature has been maintained.

The physical inspections are labor intensive, expensive, subject to human error, and may experience extensive time lapses between intervals. Should there be an equipment failure between inspections, the temperature may fluctuate enough to spoil the cargo and generate a claim.

The equipment owners are seeking an effective method to automate this inspection process and provide immediate notification of equipment failure, allowing them to take the appropriate action to avoid cargo spoilage.

Our research has found the carrier market already has several companies offering solutions to meet this need, and we have decided not to focus our efforts in this area at this time.

Comprehensive research of competition within this market identifies the existing segmentation of the services available today. In each case, NaviTag Technologies offers a unique solution to address the needs that are not fulfilled by our competitors.

We differentiate ourselves by providing the cargo owners and government agencies with a tool that monitors cargo and security without reliance on third party equipment owner’s historical and inaccurate data.

4.1.2 Competition and Buying Patterns

The need to track and secure cargo is not new, and vast arrays of solutions exist from companies large and small to deal with the unique needs of each party. Merging and acting on partner messaging is typically found in supply chain management solutions while event notification and positional information of a physical device is categorized as asset management. Cargo security devices span the gamut from breakable plastic seals to hardened iron bars. The following is a breakdown of each category’s offerings:

Supply chain management – Supply chain solutions strive to manage every step of a product’s life cycle, from raw material procurement to customer delivery. After each step is automated, data exchange procedures with each business partner (supplier, carrier, trucking company, etc.) integrates the disparate information flows into a single efficient process. Examples of such solutions are X, Y and Z.

If a company already has a supply chain solution in place, an alternative is to outsource all the data exchange processes to a supply chain messaging aggregator. Only one integration is required – between the customer and the aggregator – and the burden of conversion and data quality is outsourced. An example of such a service is W company.

In both situations, integration with shipping partners aids in increasing the flow of information to the company, but partners can only provide data that is – for the most part – historical. “Where the container is” isn’t captured, “when a container passed a checkpoint” is.

Asset management – Apart from asset recovery solutions such as LoJack, asset management solutions permanently attach a wireless transceiver to a device to gain visibility and control over its usage. The transceivers range and type of data it provides is highly dependant on the application.

Container ports need to maximize the flow of containers though their facility by precisely tracking their location. Systems such as AAA & BBB address this need by creating a localized sensor network and attaching transceiver beacons on their yard equipment.

Container owners – typically the carriers – need to maximize the utilization of the thousands of containers that are scattered throughout the world. Refrigerated containers are particularly needy; an individual outage translates to spoiled cargo and lost revenue. Solutions like those from CCC, DDD, EEE & FFF utilize nationwide coverage networks with status reporting and – with CCC – remote control/restart capabilities.

In all cases, the capital investment – and benefits gained – is borne by the equipment owner. While this might not be that difficult for a Port to justify a system to track 35 pieces of yard equipment, carriers need to manage anywhere from thousands, to hundreds of thousands of containers.

Security – While the introduction of containers into the shipping industry provided far greater protection than break-bulk shipping, total losses due to theft are an estimated $54 billion annually. There are two types of security devices available in the market today that provide limited protection, a physical lock and an electronic seal.

The physical lock is straightforward – close both doors and place locks on each door handle. Variations to this model include bars, cables, and housings. Unfortunately, these approaches have the following problems.

• Key distribution to recipient/loss of the key to open the lock.
• Customs requirements to inspect the container’s contents.
• Forced access to the container though a means other than the door handle (removal of the door, cutting an access pin, etc.).

The second is an electronic seal that records a variety of activities that can be interrogated by a data collection device – typically a hand-held device. It can document actions – like a door being opened – but lacks the ability to transmit the information independently. More elaborate data capture solutions exist that can interrogate and save data on the seal – but an extensive network of these proximity activators needs to be placed throughout the entire intermodal journey.

While each of these categories offers a valuable and needed service to their customers, they lack the integration and coordination capabilities that our target market requires. Specifically:

• Supply chain solutions rely on aggregation of historical data which can be anywhere from hours to days old. The manual process from which the data is captured and the methods used to share data among partners is inherently insecure. The possibility exists that incorrect or forged data can enter the system.
• Asset management solutions track the equipment – not the cargo – and represent a significant capital cost if deployed en mass. Given the competitive nature of the shipping industry, and the costs associated with outfitting every container with a tracking device, the probability of carriers installing these devices any time soon is slim. It is also unlikely that shippers would be willing to forgo competitive pricing to select only carriers who make the investment, and government agencies (Customs, for example) cannot be limited in this matter.

Differentiation

NaviTag Technologies’ approach to the market is fundamentally different from other electronic tracking/sealing companies in a variety of ways.

Tracking/Tracing Visibility – The NaviTag monitors the cargo, not the container. This empowers the government agency or shipper with control of the data and eliminates reliance on third party sources. In this model the NaviTag owner receives timely location information, accurate data, and the ability to choose the cargoes they want to monitor regardless of the service providers involved. This allows them to change partners whenever they wish and still receive data in a consistent format and assured quality.

Security – The NaviTag provides immediate information regarding security breaches that allows the government agency or shipper to investigate and take the necessary corrective action. This system allows authorized parties (Customs) access to the cargo and notifies the NaviTag owner whenever the container has been entered. Should an unauthorized party enter the container by disconnecting the sensor seal or activating the light sensor, the NaviTag owner is notified immediately of the security breach and the shipper or government agency has the opportunity to inspect the cargo to establish if an action is necessary.

4.2 Market Segmentation

While the advent of containerization provided a simplified method of shipping goods internationally, the complexity of multimodal transport still requires a coordinated process of communication between the various service providers involved. Containerization allows goods to be transported from origin to destination in a single medium but requires the participation of as many as 10 different service providers to complete this task as outlined below.

4.2.1 The Container Shipping Market

In 1950, shipping goods via container was introduced as an alternative to general loose cargo handling (referred to as break-bulk shipping). Since then, container shipping has become the preferred way to ship merchandise internationally, displacing break-bulk shipping in all but the largest of cargo 2 .

• It allows the cargo to move from in-land point of origin in one continent to in-land point of destination in another continent, without the need to handle the cargo itself – the sealed container seamlessly moves between multiple modes of transportation (“intermodal” shipment), from the back of a truck’s chassis, onto a specially built container ship, and back again on top of a truck, rail, or barge, as the case may be.
• Container shipping utilizes standard size containers. This standardization of capacity carrying units has introduced efficiencies into the management of shipping, warehousing and general distribution.
• Container shipping provided greater security from theft of cargoes and improved protection from breakage by avoiding the manual handling that took place during break-bulk shipments.

Today, almost all finished and semi-finished goods are shipped internationally within containers, including: chemicals, food products, wood/paper products, metals, minerals, plastics, machinery and various manufactured products, textile, vehicles, medical equipment, etc.

We estimate the size of the container shipping market at $120 billion ($80 billion in port-to-port revenues alone 3 ).

The annual unit growth of the number of containers shipped averaged 8% in the 1990’s with 10% in 1999, 12.5% in 2000, 4.3% in 2001, and is forecast to increase by 5.6% in 2002. In the next decade, container terminals around the world are set to experience rapid growth, with global container handling throughput expected to reach between 300 million and 342 million TEUs in 2005 and between 407 million and 525 million TEUs in 2010.

Ocean carriers are currently taking delivery of new vessel orders that were placed during the strong growth years prior to 2001, increasing the container vessel fleet by 12.3% in 2001 and 14.5% in 2002. This additional capacity is creating pressure on rate levels and a significant reduction in revenues is expected to continue through 2002. On the positive side, this increase in capacity is positioning the ocean carriers to be prepared for the increase in volumes that have been forecast.

The dramatic growth in the container shipping industry is attributed to the improved efficiencies and lower cost of transport; opening borders and allowing manufacturers around the world to be competitive in foreign markets.

The container shipping industry grew from a single company in the 1950’s to a very fragmented industry of over 500 companies operating in excess of 2,500 vessels today. As the number of carriers increased, the frequency of sailings and speed of the vessels improved, providing manufacturers with the ability to offer their products around the world with shorter delivery times and lower transportation cost. This changed the nature of the market from dealing with a competitor around the corner to having to compete with a manufacturer on another continent.

In the U.S. alone, there are over 25,000 individual companies exporting container loads of cargo and over 32,000 importers based on the 2000 Journal of Commerce Piers report. This information is compiled from the export declaration forms submitted by exporters and from the import duty data collected by U.S. Customs and only takes into account cargo importing/exporting from U.S. ports.

The substantial volume of U.S. cargo transiting through Canadian ports is not included in these figures. There are no reports available to identify the total numbers of global shippers today but the number of individual companies around the world engaged in international container shipping has grown to the hundreds of thousands. The market is forecast to increase approximately 100% over the next 10 years due to increased global demand. The projected number of shippers will increase proportionally.

[2] Source: Mercer Management Consulting study submitted on behalf of the carriers to the House Judiciary Committee 3/22/00. [3] Sources: L H. Clarkson & Company Ltd., Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd.

4.3 Target Market Segment Strategy

Our choice of target markets is based on comprehensive experience within the transportation industry coupled with an in-depth understanding of the customer’s needs.

We have taken a unique approach to providing the visibility and security information that cargo owners and government agencies are seeking, but have yet to find an acceptable solution.

By capitalizing on newly developed technology and the requirements for security improvements, we have structured the timing of this venture to address the heightened demand.

Cargo Visibility

As shippers strive to improve their customer service and maintain correct inventory level, they demand greater “visibility” into the status and location of their shipments. Unfortunately, the benefits gained by container shipping unearthed a different problem – lack of information standardization.

Informational “silos” existed – each party would know how to talk and exchange information with a few of the members, but not to all ten service providers. Additionally, shippers typically selected different service providers depending on terms of the shipment, further complicating matters.

To get to this information, the shipper must undertake a massive data integration project with each service provider, or outsource the entire effort to a supply chain visibility company. Each party’s messaging standard must be converted to a common format before the shipper can utilize this data.

Once completed, the next problem arises. All the data generated from each of the service providers is, by it nature, historical. Where a container is located is not part of the data. The information provided today is based on the last event deemed worthy of notation by the service provider.

The quality of this information can vary widely based on the sophistication and integration of the systems utilized by the service providers as well as the quality and dedication of the individuals entering the data. All but a few service providers rely on some sort of manual data entry/validation by field personnel, and are susceptible to human error. The market is seeking a single source solution to provide accurate and timely information regarding the location of their shipments.

Cargo Security

While cargo location information is improving, cargo security data is practically non-existent. The shipper places a plastic or soft metal seal on a container and records the number on their documentation. Upon receipt, the receiver confirms that the seal is still intact and the container has not been opened.

Typically the first notice of a security breach is upon delivery, at which point it may be too late to take necessary actions to avoid inventory issues or establish where the invasion occurred. Containerization has significantly reduced incidents of theft over break-bulk shipping but with the increase in volume of international trade, this is still a common occurrence.

The U.S. Government is also seeking improvements in the security of cargo imported through U.S. ports. With only 2% of the 600,000 containers entering the U.S. weekly being inspected, there is a substantial threat that dangerous materials or weapons of mass destruction could be imported via a container, potentially bringing commerce to a standstill.

There are numerous U.S. Government agencies are becoming involved in the security initiatives and funds have been allocated to invest in new technologies.

4.3.1 Market Needs

The market has expressed the need to have more control in the transportation of their cargo through better information. This has manifested itself in the form of greater visibility and timely event notice so the appropriate corrective or scheduled actions can be implemented, to ensure an efficient supply chain. The areas that have been identified as lacking are:

• The need for accurate and timely visibility information instead of the existing event-based historical data.
• The requirement for improvement in the quality of data received through the current manual entry system.
• Confidence in the source of the information.
• The ability to apply a single visibility solution across all service providers involved in the end-to-end transport without expensive integration or outsourcing.
• The ability to receive visibility data in a consistent format across multiple service providers.
• Timely notification of a security breach to allow immediate inspection and the necessary corrective action.

Strategy and Implementation Summary

We have clearly defined the target market and have differentiated ourselves by offering a unique solution to our customers information needs. Our sales and marketing strategy will be a combination of targeted mass marketing techniques as well as a focused direct sales team approach. Reasonable sales targets have been established with an implementation plan designed to ensure the goals set forth below are achieved.

5.1 Marketing Strategy

NaviTag Technologies will pursue an aggressive sales and marketing plan to achieve market penetration and meet the profitability goals outlined in the key financials section. The marketing plan execution is market specific.

• Shippers – we will engage in a mass marketing and advertising campaign to develop market penetration and brand recognition. A combination of direct mail and targeted media advertising will be utilized to reach the broadest market possible. Search engine optimization techniques will be initiated to increase our visibility on the Internet and drive traffic to us. Direct sales will be reserved for the largest U.S. shippers based on an extensive network of contacts.
• Government Agencies – the agencies seeking improved security tools will be solicited through direct contacts and personal meetings. Contacts have been established within the D.O.T., U.S. Customs, and the U.S.C.G.

Due to the large volume and geographic scope of the shipper market, we will engage in a mass marketing and advertising campaign to develop brand recognition and market penetration.

This product and service can be communicated effectively in direct mail and print ads to reach the broadest market possible.

Since there is familiarity with the technology and concept, direct mailings utilizing a targeted industry database from X will be a cost effective means of introducing NaviTag to the market. X is a direct marketer databases listing 50,000 U.S. importing and exporting companies including detail on their industry sector and annual container volumes. Such databases provide for a more focused marketing campaign as well as promotions to targeted customer groups.

Print media advertising will be employed sparingly in industry publications like Xxx, Yyy & Zzz for the U.S. market and 1 & 2 for the European market to reach those not listed in Xxx .

Press releases targeted to specific sectors of the industry will be utilized to announce recent developments in technology and customer acquisition as a cost effective means of exposure to the target market.

Direct sales will be used for the largest U.S. shippers through a personal network of contacts developed by Mr. Magown over a twenty-year career in shipping.

Our marketing campaign will include utilizing search engine optimization techniques to increase our visibility on the Internet and drive traffic to us. Our current website is a promotional description of our services and will encourage potential customers to contact us directly or through the site email.

Industry trade shows draw large numbers of qualified customers that are seeking the latest technological advances to improve their supply chain or reduce transportation cost. We will target six to eight trade shows annually to increase brand awareness and solicit direct sales.

The government agencies will be solicited directly by the sales staff and personal meetings will be scheduled. Onsite presentations and demonstrations will be performed, and in turn will help establish personal relationships.

These relationships will allow NaviTag Technologies to network contacts throughout the U.S. Government to capitalize on the individual needs of the numerous agencies that have security concerns. Our contacts to date have been met with enthusiasm for this type of solution and resulted in requests for prototypes to perform field testing.

5.2 Sales Strategy

We will be offering a unique solution that will be introduced to the market through targeted advertising, direct mail, website optimization and direct sales.

The direct sales force will consist of three industry-seasoned sales people lead by Mr. Magown. Traffic from mass marketing will be serviced by the sales admin located in Boston.

Mr. Magown will manage the government agency and large shipper markets through personal sales calls. This market is a long term, repetitive business where relationships are a key component to success.

Sales will be targeted to U.S. companies in the early stages as this market alone exceeds 500,000 shippers. Plans to expand into the European and Asia markets are scheduled for 2004 and beyond.

5.2.1 Sales Forecast

The table below outlines the sales forecast and cost of goods sold. The forecast is based on reasonable sales projections within this very large market.

The exponential growth of the access charge revenues is based on the cumulative volume of the NaviTag units sold. For every unit sold, NaviTag Technologies charges a monthly fee to access the data that remains in effect for as long as the unit is in service.

5.3 Milestones

The following table lists important program milestones, with dates and managers in charge, and budgets for each. The milestone schedule indicates our emphasis on planning for implementation.

Management Summary management summary will include information about who's on your team and why they're the right people for the job, as well as your future hiring plans.">

NaviTag Technologies management is comprised of experienced entrepreneurs and business professionals from the transportation and technology management industries. Our management team possesses a breadth of functional experience in container shipping, product development, the marketing of emerging products/technologies, strategic partnering, professional services and corporate finance.

Mr. Magown and Mr. Galley will share the senior management responsibilities with Mr. Magown directing the sales/marketing, finance, and distribution efforts and Mr. Galley directing the development, operations, and production. The organizational structure and personnel plan reflect our intentions to maintain an organization that is customer oriented and technologically proficient, while efficiently managing cost controls and productivity.

6.1 Organizational Structure

The organization is structured into two groups with sales/marketing, finance, and distribution being located in the Boston office and development, operation, and production being located in the New York office.

6.2 Management Team

Jim Galley Mr. Galley is a seasoned technology professional with over 15 years of experience in management, operations, application and product development in technology environments.

As CTO and founding member of GoCargo.com, Mr. Galley brought the company from a business plan concept to processing transactions online in six weeks.

As executive director at PC Magazine Labs, Mr. Galley created the industry standard reference for benchmarking personal computer technology, successfully branding the results and generating mass acceptance from major marketing and technical communities – IBM, Intel, Dell, HP to name a few.

Mr. Galley also has Fortune 50 financial experience as a technical officer, and has run a data center operation.

Bob Magown Mr. Magown has spent twenty years serving in senior management positions with transportation-related companies focusing on sales, strategic growth and operational support.

Mr. Magown was an original member of the Internet start-up GoCargo.com and held the position of vice president of sales. Mr. Magown initiated and negotiated the sale of the GoCargo.com software and IP to BridgePoint, a division of CSX Transportation and provided consulting services.

For 17 years prior to joining GoCargo.com he built a successful career with the ocean carrier CAST (CP Ships), where he fulfilled a variety of senior sales and marketing positions including regional director east coast. At CAST, he held positions at the World Headquarters in Bermuda, North American Headquarters in Montreal, as well as regional offices in New Jersey and Boston.

From 1978 to 1982, Mr. Magown was director of regional sales of Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO). Mr. Magown holds a BS degree in business management from Bryant College.

6.3 Personnel Plan

The Personnel Plan reflects the staffing levels required to create the electronic tag, central database, and establish the customer base needed to achieve the revenues projected and reach profitability.

We have projected a staff of XX employees by January 2003 and recognize the need to increase the sales/marketing department in 2005. The new sales/marketing positions have not been included in this plan.

Financial Plan investor-ready personnel plan .">

Our financial plan is based on raising substantial seed capital by way of private equity to create the electronic tag, develop the central database, and establish the customer base.

We will achieve profitability in just over two years and due to the nature of the exponential growth of access charges, we will realize a respectable net profit on sales by year three.

7.1 Important Assumptions

The table below presents the assumptions used in the financial calculations of this business plan.

7.2 Break-even Analysis

NaviTag Technologies revenues are generated from NaviTag unit sales (a one time expense) and access charges (a monthly recurring fee). Given this, the break-even formula must be adjusted to reflect both one time and recurring revenue activities. Using the sales forecast as a guide, and based on estimates made for fixed cost, average revenue per NaviTag unit and access charges, variable cost for unit manufacturing and service fees, the break-even volume was established to be 700 units per month with a subscription base of 6,800. We anticipate achieving break even at month 24 as detailed in the graph below.

Table: Break-even Analysis

7.3 Projected Profit and Loss

Based on the realistic sales projections and efficient cost control measures in place, NaviTag Technologies will achieve profitability in just over two years. Company profits in subsequent years will increase to the first million in 2005, and a five-fold increase in 2007 due largely to the exponential growth of the access charges. Gross margins reveal dramatic growth, again because of the growth in revenues from access charges.

7.4 Projected Cash Flow

Cash flow is projected to decline for the first two years of operation based on the reasonable assumption of 45-day credit collections. NaviTag Technologies has calculated its financial plan so that it will have enough cash from investors and debt to survive until a positive cash flow is realized in 2005.

7.5 Projected Balance Sheet

The table below presents the balance sheet for NaviTag Technologies. This table reflects a positive cash position throughout the period of this financial plan and dramatic growth in net worth in 2007.

7.6 Business Ratios

The table below presents common business ratios as a reference. Since the business of “cargo tracking” does not fall underneath any predefined Industry dataset, for Industry Profile comparisons in this table we chose, NAICS 488390 Other Support Activities for Water Transportation (SIC 3731), as the closest option.

7.7 Long-term Plan

We anticipate that the percentage of ocean cargo deemed time sensitive, of high value, or of a hazardous nature will continue to increase faster than the average increase in cargo in general. Further, we believe that the concerns over ship, port, and national security risks will balloon. With only 2% of the imports being inspected today, the concern of dangerous cargoes compromising the port operations has created opportunities for a cargo tracking/security alert device such as ours.

Our cargo tracking efforts will be focused on those shippers with high value, time sensitive, or hazardous cargo. Our security focus will be directed to those government agencies seeking to improve security of the U.S. ports involved in processing the 600,000 containers entering weekly.

We will achieve profitability in just over two years and due to the nature of the exponential growth of access charges, we will realize a respectable net profit on sales by year three. The success of our implementation and sales efforts will have a strong affect on our year three through year five operations and fiscal position. If slower than planned, we risk a negative cash balance, even though we might have already reached profitability. Additional rounds of investment may be needed, or acquiring long-term business loans.

Ironically, a faster than planned industry acceptance of NaviTag could push us into a period of risky increased expansion, which would also drain our operating capital reserve, again requiring us to seek another round of investment or loans. 

Alternatively, early-on proof-of-concept and feasibility analyses, could spark high demand from governmental agencies and/or the military establishment could lead to substantial financial and operational grants, subsidies, contracts, etc.

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Control Plan Development

Control plans.

– Control Plan Development –

⇓   Introduction to Control Plans

⇓   What is a Control Plan

⇓   Why Develop a Control Plan

⇓   How to Develop a Control Plan

⇓   Learn More About Control Plans

Introduction to Control Plans

Most companies are looking for methods to reduce cost and eliminate waste in their processes. In the business world today controlling waste and maintaining a high level of quality is imperative for a company to succeed. The cost of doing business is ever increasing. Rising costs of raw materials combined with labor and equipment costs have brought scrap reduction into the critical to business category. The cost of steel alone has more than doubled in the last two years. Therefore, it has become increasingly important to assure that parts are being produced that conform to customer requirements every time. In addition, we must have the ability to detect a non-conforming part or assembly as well as a plan for responding to changing process conditions.  The majority of manufacturing companies are experienced at detecting initial problems and developing corrective actions to correct the problem. But many fall short when it comes to sustaining those corrective actions or process improvements over a long period of time. In many cases the process gradually returns to its previous state and the problems eventually resurface. The purpose of a Control Plan is to monitor processes and assure that any improvements are maintained over the life cycle of the part or product. Control Plans are currently being utilized to ensure product quality in the Automotive, Aerospace, Agricultural Equipment, Heavy Equipment and many other industries throughout the world.  A Control Plan is often a Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) requirement for suppliers of parts to companies in these industries. The primary resource for information regarding Control Plan Methodology in the automotive industry is the Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control Plan manual published by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG).

What is a Control Plan

The Control Plan is a document that describes the actions (measurements, inspections, quality checks or monitoring of process parameters) required at each phase of a process to assure the process outputs will conform to pre-determined requirements. In simpler terms, the Control Plan provides the operator or inspector with the information required to properly control the process and produce quality parts or assemblies. It should also include instructions regarding actions taken if a non-conformance is detected. The Control Plan does not replace detailed operator instructions. In some cases the Control Plan is used in conjunction with an inspection sheet or checklist. The Control Plan helps assure quality is maintained in a process in the event of employee turnover by establishing a standard for quality inspection and process monitoring.  Control Plans are living documents that should be periodically updated as the measurement methods and controls are improved throughout the life cycle of the product.

Why Develop a Control Plan

Developing and implementing Control Plan Methodology has several benefits. The use of Control Plans helps reduce or eliminate waste in a process. Businesses today must reduce waste everywhere possible. The Control Plan improves product quality by identifying the sources of variation in a process and establishing controls to monitor them. Control Plans focus on the product characteristics most important to the customer and the business. By focusing on what is critical to quality during the process, you can reduce scrap, eliminate costly reworks and prevent defective product from reaching the customer. When scrap and reworks are reduced, throughput of the process is inherently improved. Manufacturing efficiency is improved and your company’s bottom line is impacted in a positive manner.

How to Develop a Control Plan

The Control Plan should be developed by a Cross Functional Team (CFT) that has an understanding of the process being controlled or improved. By utilizing a CFT, you are likely to identify more opportunities for improvement of the process. The Control Plan is more than just a form to fill out.  It is a plan developed by the team to control the process and ensure the process produces quality parts that meet the customer requirements. The information contained in the control plan can originate from several sources, including but not limited to the following:

• Process Flow Diagram
• Design Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (DFMEA)
• Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (PFMEA)
• Special Characteristics Matrix
• Lessons Learned from similar parts
• Design Reviews
• Team knowledge about the process
• Field or warranty issues

Throughout the life cycle of a product, the information contained in the list above frequently changes or the content grows. Therefore the Control Plan must be a living document, continuously updated as new information is added. The Control Plan therefore is an integral part of an effective product quality system.

The Three Levels of Control Plans

Prior to completing the Control Plan development, the team must determine the proper level appropriate for the process being controlled. There are three designations for a Control Plan level based upon what point the product is at in the New Product Introduction (NPI) process. They are as follows:

• Prototype – This level Control Plan should include descriptions of the dimensions to be measured and the material and performance tests to be completed during the prototype build
• Pre-Launch – This level of Control Plan should contain descriptions of the dimensions to be measured and the material and performance tests to be completed after prototype but prior to product launch and regular production
• Production – This level of Control Plan should contain a comprehensive listing of the product and process special characteristics, the process controls, measurement methods and tests that will be performed during regular production

The Control Plan Format

There are many variations of the form used to document the Control Plan.  Most of the forms used are in the Excel format although there are custom software packages available for many quality tools, including Control Plans. The following section will provide descriptions of what general information should be populated in each of the blocks. The types of control plans vary depending upon the process being controlled.

• Control Plan Level – The appropriate box should be checked to indicate the level or type of Control Plan that is being developed
• Control Plan Number – Enter the appropriate number that the Control Plan will be listed as in your document control system
• In addition the appropriate change or revision level should be indicated. The control plan should be reviewed and updated with each level change or revision of the part or assembly. The control plan should be a living document.
• The process name is preferred if the Control Plan is covering a family of parts produced on the same process
• Supplier/Plant – Enter name of the company and plant/division developing the Control Plan
• Supplier Code – Your designated supplier code should be entered if the part is being produced for an external customer
• Key Contact/Phone – The Name and contact information (phone number, email) of the primary contact responsible for the Control Plan
• Core Team – Enter the names of the CFT that prepared the Control Plan
• Supplier/Plant Approval Date – Once the approval is received from the customer, enter the date approval was received
• Other Approval/Date – Enter any additional approval information and date if required
• Date Original – The date the Control Plan was initially completed should be entered here
• Date/Rev – Insert the latest revision date of the Control Plan released in this box
• Customer Engineering Approval/Date – If required, obtain the customer engineering approval information and enter in this location
• Customer Quality Approval/Date – If required, obtain the customer quality representative approval information and enter in this location
• Part numbers may be entered for an assembly and in some applications the process step number from the Process flow is entered
• Process Name/Operation Description – Enter information from the process flow diagram that describes the operation being performed in this column
• Machine/Device/Jigs/Tool for Manufacturing – In this column, identify the equipment, machines, fixtures, jigs and other tools required to accomplish the particular process operation listed in the corresponding row

Characteristics Section

This section of the Control Plan describes the particular characteristics of the product or process that may need to be controlled and documented. The characteristic could be product or process related and the data could be variable or attribute data. The difference between product and process characteristics is often confused when completing a Control Plan.

• Number – This column is used for assigning a number corresponding to information in the process flow, work instructions or a numbered print
• Product – Product characteristics are physical features or properties of an assembly or component part usually described on the drawing that can be measured when the process is completed. Not all the dimensions or features on the print should be listed on the Control Plan. The team should determine the key or critical characteristics and compile them from their various sources. Special, Key or Critical characteristics come from the DFMEA exercise, print reviews, product or process historical information and customer feedback. If there are no key product characteristics for the particular operation, leave this space blank.
• Process – In this column, the team should identify the Key characteristics relating to the process. Examples would be the setting on a torque tool or the orientation of parts in a fixture. If there are no key process characteristics for the particular operation, leave this space blank. There could be multiple process characteristics listed for a single product characteristic. Key process characteristics can originate from the PFMEA or team knowledge of the process performance.
• P – Process
• R – Regulatory
• OS – Operator Safety

Methods Section

The information contained in the methods section includes the specification to be measured and a plan for collecting the data and controlling the process. The data could be variable or attribute data.

• Product/Process Specification / Tolerance – List the specification and tolerance as defined on the drawing, material specification, 3D model or in the manufacturing or assembly documentation
• Evaluation/Measurement Technique – Identify the measurement tools, gages, fixtures and / or test equipment used to evaluate the part or process specification listed in the previous column. A Measurement Systems Analysis (MSA) is recommended to assure that correct, consistent usable data is being collected.
• Sample Size – If sampling is required, list the corresponding sample size or number of parts or assemblies that should be measured /evaluated during the process
• Sample Frequency – If sampling is required, list the frequency at which the samples will be taken during the process. As an example, the frequency could be 1st, 25th and final, or it could be continuous.
• Control Method / Prevention – This column should list the prevention controls and / or documents the operator will need to complete the process step. This should include work instructions, drawings, visual aids, etc.
• Control Method / Detection – The information in this column is critical for the effectiveness of the Control Plan. This column should list any detection controls determined by the team during the previous quality plan activities, including the DFMEA and PFMEA. The methods could include but are not limited to Statistical Process Control (SPC) , visual inspection, attribute data collection, error proofing, etc. A document or procedure number may also be populated in this space. The effectiveness of the control selected should be evaluated on a regular basis.
• Reaction Plan – This column should specify the actions required to prevent production of non-conforming products. The actions should be the responsibility of the operator and / or their immediate supervisor. They should include at the very least how to label, identify and quarantine the non-conforming material and the proper disposition of the suspect material, parts or assemblies. In addition, the reaction plan should include directions for properly documenting the incident and who should be notified of the non-conformance.

Control Plans can vary depending upon what type of process is being controlled. There are many different applications where the Control Plan can add value to the process. Below are a few examples of the different applications:

• Equipment set-up process where the major contributor to process variation is proper set-up of the equipment prior to the production run
• Equipment tooling dominant process where the major influence on variation is the impact of tool life on the part or product design characteristics
• Operator dominant process where the variation in the process is a result of the knowledge or training of the operator and the proper controls

The Control Plan can be a very effective tool for reducing the amount of scrap generated by a process. It can be very useful at improving quality and helping contain any non-conforming product prior to it leaving the work cell. It is most effective when incorporated into a larger quality plan. The Control Plan is the same as any other tool, in that to get the most value you must know how to use it properly. Your teams will require training and coaching in order to implement an effective Control Plan system. If you are interested in learning more about Control Plan Methodology, please contact one of our experienced professionals at Quality-One.

Learn More About Control Plan Development

Quality-One offers Quality and Reliability Support for Product and Process Development through Consulting, Training and Project Support. Quality-One provides Knowledge, Guidance and Direction in Quality and Reliability activities, tailored to your unique wants, needs and desires. Let us help you Discover the Value of Control Plan Consulting , Control Plan Training or Control Plan Project Support .

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Mastering Control Plans: A Guide for Manufacturers

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Unearth the potential of control plans for manufacturers to streamline operations, enhance product quality, and outshine competitors.

Understanding Control Plans

Control plans define the rules for monitoring and managing certain operational variables that significantly impact the product quality. By delineating robust guidelines, these documents help control and maintain manufacturing processes in optimal conditions.

A control plan is a tool that illustrates what measures a business should take during its manufacturing process to maintain control and ensure quality. By providing a standardized and structured approach to quality control, it enhances operational consistency and effectiveness.

What is a Control Plan?

A Control Plan is a methodical and comprehensive approach designed to monitor, control, and manage the processes and outcomes in manufacturing. It's a roadmap that orchestrates the sequential steps manufacturers must follow to ensure product quality and prevent defects.

A Control Plan acts as a dynamic toolkit, bolstering performance, quality, and consistency by directing precise control points and outlining corrective measures in the manufacturing process.

This pivotal tool streamlines the process by pinpointing the critical points where controls must be implemented. It underlines what to control, how to control, and who is responsible for the control, ensuring each part meets the precise specifications.

Plunging deeper, a Control Plan also includes monitoring methods, measurement systems, and outlines corrective actions if the specifications are deviated. It's not just a tool, it's a dynamic toolkit bolstering performance, quality, and consistency in the manufacturing process.

Importance of Control Plans in Manufacturing

Control Plans revolutionize manufacturing by fundamentally altering workflow, ensuring there is a proactive strategy in place to maintain quality and efficiency. Their strategic integration is a game changer, mitigating risks and averting process deviations before they occur.

Control Plans hold an intrinsic role within the manufacturing ecosystem. They are the lifeline that enables manufacturers to optimize operations, ensuring every product meets the defined standards and regulatory requirements.

A well-implemented Control Plan plays a crucial role in giving manufacturers a competitive edge. It ensures a high level of consistency and reliability, translating into satisfied customers and brand loyalty, aspects vital to business success in a competitive market.

Types of Control Plans

Navigating the diverse world of control plans is vital due to its purpose-built nature. Static, dynamic, and centralized control plans each have distinct objectives and applications in manufacturing.

A static control plan, often used for processes with a fixed sequence, harnesses consistent standards to ensure product quality.

On the other hand, dynamic control plans offer flexibility, adjusting to process changes and variations, for continuous improvement within complex manufacturing scenarios.

Centralized control plans stand out with a comprehensive approach, overseeing multiple processes or sites, underscoring their significance to large-scale, integrated manufacturing operations.

Components of a Control Plan

Every control plan consists of several crucial components, creating a structured roadmap for manufacturing processes. These integral pieces include process description, characteristics measurements, control methods, and disposition for out of control condition.

A closer inspection of a control plan reveals key elements. The operational steps to be controlled, corresponding process measurements, control methods to monitor performance, and specific actions for deviation scenarios form the backbone of effective control plans.

Creating an Effective Control Plan

Crafting an effective control plan hinges on precise identification of critical control points, definition of control limits, and diligent implementation of proper monitoring and measuring systems. It also entails a delineation of coherent corrective actions to ensure regulatory compliance and sustain production quality.

Delving into the components of a successful Control Plan, one dives deep into multiple facets. Detailed attention to training and education, comprehensive documentation, and regular communication, along with steadfast auditing and review, empowers an assembly line with the power of a finely tuned Control Plan.

Identifying Critical Control Points

The journey to successful manufacturing commences with identifying key control points. These unseen heroes ensure consistent product quality, preventing unfavorable scenarios from surfacing during production cycles.

Critical checkpoints within your control plan function as a blueprint for quality management. They mark areas requiring heightened vigilance, as potential pitfalls or opportunities for improvement.

Mastering the identification of these critical points demands a blend of comprehensive risk analyses, and an intimate understanding of your production processes.

Crucial touchpoints where errors could occur must be marked out and monitored. These breakpoints, if unchecked, could severely compromise overall product quality and efficiency.

In essence, the art of pinpointing critical checkpoints in a control plan is a constructive path to iron out potential defects, conserve resources and ensure customer satisfaction. It's the fine line separating average from exceptional in the manufacturing realm.

Establishing Control Limits

Control limits form the trifecta of a control plan's framework in manufacturing, alongside process inputs and outputs. Their primary function is to signify the point of principle performance variation, thereby initiating corrective measures.

The role of control limits is vital in sustaining operational excellence. Defined upper and lower thresholds signify if a process has deviated from its normal functioning, drawing attention to underlying issues.

Discerning the crux of control limits is fundamental for manufacturers who seek consistent product quality. Adequate setting of these thresholds aids in mitigating costly blunders and product failures.

Control limits bear significant collaboration with process variation and quality control. Regular assessment of these established parameters forms an integral part of ensuring process stability and excellence.

Control limits in a control plan also enhance proactive disaster management. Bundled with swift corrective measures, they curtail material wastage, reduceed downtime, and bolster overall productivity, thus propelling customer satisfaction and innovation.

Implementing Monitoring and Measuring Systems

Leveraging monitoring systems can significantly enhance the efficiency of a control plan. These systems aid in identifying deviations from the established standards, facilitating quick corrective measures.

Monitoring systems not only highlight discrepancies, but they also generate valuable data to evaluate overall operation efficiency. This insight aids in refining tailor-made strategies enhancing control plan efficacy.

Incorporating measuring systems within a control plan is equally vital. They deliver a quantitative understanding of performance, helping identify problematic areas and potential areas of improvement.

An integrated approach of both monitoring and measuring systems drives a robust control plan. The combination ensures efficiency, builds quality assurance, and contributes to better customer satisfaction.

Defining Corrective Actions

Corrective actions serve as the lifeline of a control plan; a robust plan requires well-structured actions to rectify deviations timely and efficiently. These actions not only fix immediate problems but also prevent their recurrence, hence enhancing overall process stability.

Understanding the role of corrective actions in streamlining control plans is central to ensuring product quality and consistency. By identifying the cause of deviations and implementing appropriate measures, manufacturers can seamlessly optimize their operations and fulfill customer expectations with ease.

Implementing Control Plans in Manufacturing

Technological innovations are accelerating the implementation of control plans in manufacturing. Digital platforms, automation, and data analytics are reshaping the way control plan processes are executed, augmenting operational efficiency.

Transitioning to a control plan-embedded manufacturing process demands an intelligent approach. It begins with conducting a comprehensive process risk assessment, followed by defining key control points, setting control limits and establishing robust monitoring systems. Crucial too is the provision of high-quality training to team members, underpinning the successful integration of this plan.

Training and Education

To ensure effective implementation, integrate control plan training for manufacturing excellence. An intersection of education and control plan implementation will create an environment conducive to heightened productivity.

• Plan focused training sessions that prioritize critical aspects of control plan implementation.
• Ensure access to resources, online courses, and workshops that further enhance understanding.
• Involve industry experts to deliver insightful sessions or seminars.
• Incorporate regular follow-up sessions to reinforce training materials.

Documentation and Communication

For successful Control Plan execution, clean documentation and effective communication are non-negotiable. Documentation ensures transparency, and communication enables rapid response to changes and deviations.

• Robust documentation provides a clear roadmap of control measures, control points, roles, and responsibilities.
• Documenting changes in control processes makes auditing a breeze and helps track the plan’s efficiency.
• Effective communication facilitates faster decision-making, reducing delays in control plan adjustments.
• Regular communication helps to keep all stakeholders informed, promoting collaboration.

Auditing and Review

To perform at the highest level and stay relevant in a highly competitive field, the process of regular auditing and reviewing is crucial to the effectiveness of your control plans. Periodic reviewing allows for the identification and implementation of necessary changes, ensuring your control plan remains a powerful strategic tool.

• Evaluating the effectiveness of current controls
• Identifying areas that require improvement
• Monitoring adherence to control limits
• Review for timely updates in process or standards
• Update training and communication strategies
• Assessing the suitability of corrective actions taken
• Ensuring compliance with internal and external regulations
• Prioritizing future investments in innovation and technology

Benefits of Mastering Control Plans

Mastering Control Plans positions manufacturers at the cutting edge of a swiftly transforming manufacturing landscape. It engenders continuous improvement, risk mitigation, and enhanced predictability; factors pivotal in delivering superior customer value.

Indubitably, an optimized Control Plan is the main driver of manufacturing success. It enables efficient allocation of resources, ensures process consistency, strengthens customer trust, and carves a niche in an increasingly competitive market.

Improved Quality and Consistency

Mastering control plans inherently fosters improved quality and consistency. This dynamic duo is attained by making critical control points effortlessly manageable, thereby minimizing variability and disparity in the final product.

• Identifying critical points that directly influence product quality.
• Establishing rigorous control limits to prevent defects.
• Implementing robust monitoring systems to ensure consistent adherence to set parameters.
• Defining effective corrective actions to rectify deviations, fostering consistency.
• Periodic training of staff to upskill them in maintaining quality consistency.
• Documenting all processes and controls for transparency and uniformity.
• Regular auditing and reviews to verify adherence to quality standards.

Increased Efficiency and Productivity

In the manufacturing realm, control plans serve as a pivotal catalyst escalating both efficiency and productivity. This elevation manifests when all key elements of production align harmoniously, achieving targeted objectives effectively.

A well-executed control plan streamlines processes, eliminating extraneous steps and maximizing resources. As a result, operations gain momentum, yielding higher output within shorter time frames.

Efficiency also receives an upward thrust when managerial oversight is robust. Control plans, by their very nature, mandate heightened vigilance over every production phase, inevitably leading to a more efficient workflow.

Productivity gains stem from this same rigorous scrutiny. When hitches are detected and resolved promptly, downtime is minimized. Swift, consistent production becomes the norm, amplifying overall productivity.

Lastly, by predictably delivering a superior product, manufacturers cement their reputation for reliability and quality. This boosts worker morale, driving productivity. Consequently, control plans become indispensable tools for any manufacturer intent on boosting efficiency and productivity.

Customer Satisfaction and Retention

Efficient control plans are the keys to unlocking customer satisfaction and retention. These tools elegantly handle product quality, ensuring a consistent experience delighting customers.

Reducing product recalls and rejections, an efficient control plan lowers frustration rates. This assures customers that their chosen manufacturer values quality, leading to greater trust and loyalty.

Control plans serve as the invisible hand, subtly directing operations to impress customers with reliability. Built on quality and consistency, it forms the backbone of a product’s reputation.

In the competitive world of manufacturing, efficient control plans shine. Demonstrating a commitment to high standards reassures customers, increasing satisfaction and retention, aiding manufacturers in standing out.

Competitive Advantage and Innovation

Winning the competitive game requires innovative strategies. Control plans, often overlooked, serve as pioneering tools to prompt competitiveness by fostering invariable quality and manufacturing efficiency.

Control plans are integral for unlocking innovation, fostering a proactive approach to problem-solving. They not only enhance operational excellence but also secure a hard-to-achieve competitive advantage.

I've spent my career in Manufacturing, and can't stop trying to make things more efficient. At home, I am a master Lego builder with my son.

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