Automated project monitoring methods

Revision as of 11:11, 23 February 2018

Abstract

Monitor and control is a vital part of a project, to make sure a project follow course according to scope deadlines and cost, there is a need to collect relevant information and analyse it. If there is any deviation to the established cost, schedule, or scope, the project manager and stakeholder can take the necessary actions to address the problem as fast as possible, thus safeguarding against further deviations.

This article only discusses the different processes and methods to monitor a project, and how to collect relevant data for further analysis, by using automatic systems. Monitoring needs to be efficient and relevant, the kind of collected data varies widely from the kind of project (construction, software, research, humanitarian...) and from the way the project was planned.

Enabled by new technologies and to be more cost-effective, automatic data collection systems are increasingly becoming used in the industry and can supplement traditional processes. Project monitoring is therefore a rapidly evolving part of project managment.

In a first part, the place of monitoring in project managment, its upsides and downsides, are developed. The relation between planning and monitoring is presented in a second part. The last 2 parts present the automated project monitoring methods.

Monitoring in project managment

Monitoring is a part of monitor and control (M&E), an essential part in a project. Monitoring is collecting data to identify deviations in the planned project, in its scope, its budget, its schedule, the quality of work, the impact, the stakeholder’s requirements... Control is taking corrective actions to adress those deviations, in order to keep the project in track. Both actions are necessary to each other as monitoring without control would be useless, and control is impossible without a monitoring activity.^[1]

While this article present new software-based monitoring methods, it is important to keep in mind those recently developed tools aren’t yet widely used in the industry yet. While they are naturally more used in software programming, while in USA’s construction projects 50% to 75% of professionals don’t use any software beside Microsoft office to monitor projects. ^[3] The methods presented here can be implemented by firms having a software development capabilitie, and should be used in large scale projects. However, for small scale or non-professionals projects, online tools can be found.

Monitoring can have some downsides. It is costly and if uneffective can become a real waste of money and ressources. Another unexpected effect was found by researchers studying the behaviour of contractors in construction projects when submitted with their performance assessment. Most contractors didn’t use the information to deliver the best possible work in the project, but instead adjusted their resources to provide a performance level as low as possible while guaranteeing future employment.^[4]

Planning and monitoring

Project monitoring is strongly dependant on how the project was planned beforehand. Most project planning tools and techniques encompass a part of project monitoring, or at least give a frame to follow. Therefore, before presenting monitoring techniques, it is important

When monitoring a project according to a planning method, emphasis must be put in getting accurate information. The first thing to consider is the level of detail. A field report need to be made in accordance with the level of detail that was used in planning. If the information is more precise, it's useless. If it's too broad, it can’t be compared with the original plan. The complex time dimension should also be considered. The consumption of resources by an activity is not linear in time and can be very segmented and uneven across its duration. This repartition of resource consumption within an activity should be taken into account to avoid inaccurate conclusions when monitoring. ^[5]

Work Breakdown Structure

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a common system to organize project in the planning phase. In WBS work item are defined in term of cost and time, and each of these work item upon completion induces an accurate report. Therefore, WBS is a planning project system that already provides a framework for project monitoring. ^[6]

Kaban Approach

BPMN development process^[7]

Kaban approach to plan and monitor a project is a scheduling system that allow visualization of workflows and progress of the project. Online Kaban tools developed using Business Process Model and Notation have therefore been developed as a way to monitor projects. As Kanban include a time dimension it is useful to monitor deadlines and delays. When fragmenting the project in different tasks, the greater the number of small tasks and artefacts, the more effective the monitoring tool will be. However, such a tool is useful to monitor project progress, but can’t monitor individual performances.^[8]

PERT

PERT is another widely used planning method in project management. Computer programs using PERT to provide effective planning monitoring and control can reschedule a project, monitor the workplan trough an associated supervisor, handle multiples start and end dates and assess the time impact of deviations in the original plan. Such tools provide a better visualization of the critical path. They implement multiples event dates scheduling the project and handle schedule modification when an unexpected event occurs. ^[9]

Qualitative methods

Indicators

In long-term projects, or project without a clearly defined, identifiable or appreciable outcome, monitoring can be done using indicators. An indicator can give a precise or overall, but always customized and thus appropriate information about a project. Several indicators can be issued in the different stages of the project. An indicator can be used to report to a project manager, keep a stakeholder informed with a comprehensive overview or give a precise understanding of certain aspects to a professional. It is designed to give suitable information related to a certain topic while keeping in mind the final objective. Appropriate information is necessary to build it, and it must be calculated in a way to reflect the importance of the different informations and assessments. Information is generally complex and need to be gathered by inspections during project development, and from different reports surveys conducting with workers and/or contractors.^[11]

An indicator should be effective to allow the best understanding of project's performances. It should be concise to be focused on its subject, simple enough to reflect reality, visual to show tendencies within project progress, understandable and transparent in its elaboration.^[12]

Report data mining

System architecture for textual entailment recognition^[13]

As said before, most project management methods, such as Earned value management-based methods require the production and evaluation of long and complex periodically written reports. However, analysing those reports take time and ressources, and conclusions are not easily reachable because written language is hard to quantify. That's why tests have been made to develop text mining methods. It uses language processing techniques in order to automatically evaluate the level of project completion from text reports. The ability to recognize textual entailment in progress reports can allow the manager to evaluate the performance of project members while reducing costs and workload.^[14]

Quantitative methods

Database framework for monitoring & control^[15]

Classic monitoring methods are labour intensive, infrequent and can incur errors. When finding deviations from the planned performance, it’s often too late to take the appropriate control measures. ^[16] . However, available and cheap technologies allowed a drive in developing automated monitoring methods based on gathering as much data as possible.

GPS and sensors

Modern technologies can be used to gather huge quantities of data, an information system can then organize this data in a usable tool to identify deviations from the original project plan. Those technologies are cheap, reliable and effective tools to gather precise kind of data.

A commonly used tool is GPS, GPS technologies (or sensors) can be used to track the geographical position of resources in a project. The information can be used to track the use of materials, machines, vehicles, workers, shipments, operators... depending of the kind of project. To have a geographical overview of all the resources involved in a project can be useful to a project manager looking to optimize a project schedule, or spot difficulties in the planned schedule. An information system paired with a GPS data intake can determine at any moment if a machine or worker leave the spatial environment in which he is supposed to be in order to work, thus noticing in real time a project manager of a deviation in the original plan. ^[17]

In a similar way, to monitor the accomplishment of different stages in a project, recent technologies allow the complex analysis of video recordings. Modern software can be used to automatically extract informations from a live video feed about the accomplishment of certain tasks. For example video recording can be used to know the actual time that workers spend carrying out activities and identify planning or productivity problems. ^[18]

Barcodes and RFID

Barcodes and RFID tags can also be used, in part of a broader organisation possibly involving operators and contractors. If possible, the systematic scan of a barcode/RFID tag on a project’s resource or raw material in every stage of the project involving it can easily be used to create a comprehensible overview of the project advancement. The use of such a system allow the breakdown of a project in the biggest possible number of small tasks without requiring more work to monitor each of these. Monitoring is done automatically, thus allowing a better overall comprehension, and an effective control.^[20]

Data mining

Clusters of delayed projects in a construction activity^[21]

As an example of automatic processing data technique Learning Vector Quantization can be used with data mining in order to create clusters of project data and creating a visual overview where it is possible to identify disparities in different project stages or areas. ^[22]

Limitations

There are, however, several technical limitations in existing automated data collection techniques. Captors and chips can’t be used to collect every kind of data, and some informations are still needed to be assessed by humans. It is especially hard to monitor human work efficiency and actions requiring human judgement.

Another issue linked to automated data acquisition lie in the monitoring frequencies of each techniques. Simultaneously using different automatic information flows to monitor a project can incur errors as some information is gathered in real-time, while some other is gathered in a periodic manner.^[23]

Ethic questions also arise considering mass surveillance in certain cases.

References

1. ↑ Isaac, Shabtai, and Ronie Navon.(2014) "Can Project Monitoring and Control Be Fully Automated?", Construction Management and Economics
2. ↑ Peterson, F, Fischer, M(2009) "Project Monitoring Methods Exploratory Case Analysis: Industry Responses", CIFE
3. ↑ Peterson, F, Fischer, M(2009) "Project Monitoring Methods Exploratory Case Analysis: Industry Responses", CIFE
4. ↑ Wong P.S.P., Cheung S.O.,Wu R.T.H.(2009) "Learning from project monitoring feedback: A case of optimizing behaviour of contractors", International Journal of Project Management
5. ↑ Li, Xiaoguang, and Lixia Wang.(2014) "Research on Important Process of Project Monitoring and Control", Advanced Materials Research
6. ↑ Li, Xiaoguang, and Lixia Wang.(2014) "Research on Important Process of Project Monitoring and Control", Advanced Materials Research
7. ↑ Miura Machado, Heydi, Alexandre L'Erario, Alessandro Duarte.(2017) "An analysis of Kanban as a project monitoring tool in undergraduate courses", Ieee Frontiers in Education Conference (fie)
8. ↑ Miura Machado, Heydi, Alexandre L'Erario, Alessandro Duarte.(2017) "An analysis of Kanban as a project monitoring tool in undergraduate courses", Ieee Frontiers in Education Conference (fie)
9. ↑ Johnson. (1964) "PERT/PMD - Project monitoring device", Ieee Transactions on Engineering Management
10. ↑ Biguan M., Craye E. (2000) "Project Monitoring in a Graduate Engineering School", Ieee Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics
11. ↑ Biguan M., Craye E. (2000) "Project Monitoring in a Graduate Engineering School", Ieee Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics
12. ↑ Biguan M., Craye E. (2000) "Project Monitoring in a Graduate Engineering School", Ieee Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics
13. ↑ Chang Y.C., Shih C.W., Hsu W.L. (2017) "Entailment-Based Intelligent System for Software Project Monitoring and Control", Ieee Systems Journal
14. ↑ Chang Y.C., Shih C.W., Hsu W.L. (2017) "Entailment-Based Intelligent System for Software Project Monitoring and Control", Ieee Systems Journal
15. ↑ Isaac, Shabtai, and Ronie Navon.(2014) "Can Project Monitoring and Control Be Fully Automated?", Construction Management and Economics
16. ↑ Isaac, Shabtai, and Ronie Navon.(2014) "Can Project Monitoring and Control Be Fully Automated?", Construction Management and Economics
17. ↑ Isaac, Shabtai, and Ronie Navon.(2014) "Can Project Monitoring and Control Be Fully Automated?", Construction Management and Economics
18. ↑ Isaac, Shabtai, and Ronie Navon.(2014) "Can Project Monitoring and Control Be Fully Automated?", Construction Management and Economics
19. ↑ Peterson, F, Fischer, M(2009) "Project Monitoring Methods Exploratory Case Analysis: Industry Responses", CIFE
20. ↑ Isaac, Shabtai, and Ronie Navon.(2014) "Can Project Monitoring and Control Be Fully Automated?", Construction Management and Economics
21. ↑ Riaz M. N., Husain S. A. (2012) "Intelligent Decision Support System for Construction Project Monitoring", 15th IEEE International Multitopic Conference
22. ↑ Riaz M. N., Husain S. A. (2012) "Intelligent Decision Support System for Construction Project Monitoring", 15th IEEE International Multitopic Conference
23. ↑ Isaac, Shabtai, and Ronie Navon.(2014) "Can Project Monitoring and Control Be Fully Automated?", Construction Management and Economics