Monitoring, Controlling & Closing

Monitoring & Controlling

Good control reveals problems early — which means you have more time to solve them. Risk control may involve choosing alternative strategies, taking corrective action, or re-planning.

Nearly all project problems are people-related. You can monitor people, but you can't control them. What you can do is influence them.

Keep Stakeholders Informed

The project manager drives progress through transparent communication.

Never sugar-coat — raising problems late only makes them worse
People avoid saying "I'm managing a failing project" because of perceived personal risk, or they convince themselves they can turn it around. The principles of respect and accountability require you to be transparent regardless
Identify which stakeholders need a status report, in what format, and how often — this should be in your communication plan
The status report should be "at a glance" — a stakeholder should be able to tell in seconds whether the project is winning or losing

Sometimes a stakeholder can unblock something with a stroke of a pen that you cannot do alone. Communicate early so they have the chance.

Always bring ideas for solving your problems — never arrive with a problem and no proposed solution.

Managing Scope Creep

Anything that can be changed will be changed, until there is no time left to change anything.

Scope creep is one of the most common causes of project failure. Managing it means:

Influencing the factors that create scope changes — shape the environment so changes require agreement before they happen
Recognising when a change has occurred — not all scope creep is announced; some of it sneaks in
Managing changes systematically when they do happen

For any proposed change, ask three questions:

What is the intent of the change?
What is the impact on timeline, cost, and resources?
What would it take to implement it?

Practical guidelines:

Communicate change orders to key stakeholders throughout the project, not just at the end
Be careful about small changes — individually they seem harmless, but they accumulate quickly
People get rewarded for good ideas, so push back on scope additions respectfully but firmly

Scope creep vs scope discovery: sometimes new information reveals that the original scope statement was genuinely inadequate. That is legitimate scope discovery, not creep. The process for handling it is the same, but the reasoning is different — and the stakeholder conversation will be different too.

Monitoring Principle

The better you scope the project upfront, the easier it is to monitor and control.

Closing the Project

The most important reason to formally close a project is to formalise the learning. Skipping this step means the next project starts from scratch.

The Closure Checklist

Evaluate the task list — no loose ends
Confirm all change requests were fulfilled
Confirm the project scope was met: goals achieved, delivered on time, worth the cost, risks well managed
Complete procurement closure
Document lessons learned — causes of variances, reasoning behind decisions made
Submit final status report to key stakeholders
Seek feedback from key stakeholders
Obtain all necessary sign-offs
Archive project documents
Publish and celebrate success

Thank people personally. People like to be thanked, and a public celebration of project close is a signal that the work mattered.

Documenting Lessons Learned

Interview the core team with these four questions:

What was done well?
What needs to be done better or differently?
What unexpected risks did we have to deal with?
How does our process need to change to meet goals in the future?

Build a historical database over time. Each project's lessons should be accessible to future teams — this is how an organisation gets better at delivery.

Closing Principles

Celebrate what you accomplished, then raise the bar a little higher each time
The stench of failure is the inability to learn from it
A formal close is not bureaucracy — it is the mechanism by which the team improves