KEY TAKEAWAYS

• During the monitoring and control phase, project managers track progress, identify issues, and take corrective action to keep the project on schedule and within budget.
• Project monitoring and control encompasses performance tracking, risk review, scope management, change control, and stakeholder reporting.
• Change control ensures that any change to the project is formally reviewed before implementation.

As work begins to progress, project managers must evaluate all activities and address obstacles that can potentially affect project outcome. Project monitoring and control run concurrently with execution and provide the processes and tools to track performance. In this article, we cover what project monitoring and control involve, why it matters, and how to approach it effectively throughout the project lifecycle.

Phase	Overview
1. Initiation	Defines the project’s purpose, scope, and stakeholders; determines if the project is feasible and worth pursuing.
2. Planning	Outlines the roadmap, including timeline, resources, budget, risks, and deliverables.
3. Execution	The team completes the work and produces deliverables based on the project plan.
4. Monitoring & Control	Tracks progress, manages changes, and ensures the project stays on scope, time, and budget.
5. Closure	Finalizes deliverables, obtains approvals, and documents lessons learned.

What is project monitoring & control?

Project monitoring and control is the process of reviewing a project’s progress and taking actions to ensure it meets the approved plan. It is the fourth phase of the project management lifecycle and runs concurrently with ongoing work to give project managers real-time insight into scope adherence and emerging risks.

Under PMBOK® 8, monitoring and controlling is a focus area that involves measuring performance, identifying variances, and managing issues to ensure the project continues to deliver its intended value. In practice, this involves collecting and analyzing data across scope, schedule, cost, quality, and risk, then taking corrective or preventive action when deviations occur. 

Why project monitoring & control matters

Project monitoring and control contribute to a project’s success through early risk detection, performance reporting, scope control, and better resource allocation. These functions equip project managers with the information to make timely decisions before they affect project outcomes. 

• Early issue identification: Project managers have sufficient lead time to respond early to issues concerning timelines and resources.
• Team accountability: Progress is tracked against specific baselines, which makes it easier to see who is responsible for each deliverable. 
• Informed stakeholder communication: Regular performance reporting ensures stakeholders have access to up-to-date information when critical decisions need to be made.
• Controlled scope changes: Any proposed change to the original plan must go through a formal approval process to protect the project’s scope and delivery commitments.
• Improved resource management: Monitoring reveals where time, budget, or staff are being overused or underused, giving project managers the data needed to redistribute resources based on current project needs. 

According to PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2023, the global average for wasted investment because of poor project performance is 5.2%. Through consistent monitoring, project managers can avoid that loss by addressing issues before they impact cost or schedule.

7 types of project monitoring

The types of project monitoring focus on a specific area of performance such as schedule, cost, scope, quality, and risk. Each dimension enables project managers to determine where to direct their attention during the execution phase. 

1. Schedule monitoring: Tracks task completion and milestone progress against the project timeline to identify potential delays before they affect the delivery date.
2. Cost monitoring: Compares actual spending against the approved budget to identify expenses that exceed planned costs.
3. Scope monitoring: Ensures the project delivers what was originally agreed upon and that any proposed changes go through an approval process before implementation.
4. Quality monitoring: Reviews deliverables against the quality standards established during planning to confirm they meet stakeholder requirements.
5. Risk monitoring: Tracks the status of identified risks throughout the project and assesses whether new risks have emerged that could affect the schedule, budget, or scope.
6. Resource monitoring: Evaluates how effectively team members, tools, and materials are being utilized across the project to identify allocation issues.
7. Compliance monitoring: Confirms the project meets organizational policies and contractual obligations throughout its lifecycle.

Project monitoring & control process: 6 key steps

The project monitoring and control process involves a series of recurring activities, including data collection, performance analysis, risk management, and stakeholder reporting. These activities continue throughout the project, giving project managers a consistent mechanism for staying on top of project performance.

Step 1: Collect performance data

Gather real-time data on the project’s progress across schedule, cost, scope, and quality. Using project management software can be useful to centralize project updates (e.g., status updates, time-tracking reports). This eliminates the need for manual record keeping and ensures everyone works from the same up-to-date information.

Step 2: Analyze performance against baselines

Compare the collected data against the approved performance targets set during the planning phase. This is where differences between planned and actual performance are calculated to determine whether the project is still on track or requires intervention.

Note: A small cost variance early in the project can be manageable, but the same variance left unaddressed for several weeks can signal a much deeper budgeting problem.

Step 3: Review risks and issues

Large-scale projects may require maintaining a formal risk register or a log of all identified risks and their potential impact. Review it at each monitoring cycle to check for changes in risk status and any emerging issues. Risks with low probability during planning can quickly shift once the project work begins.

Step 4: Report performance to stakeholders

Communicate project status to relevant stakeholders through progress reports or status meetings. A project sponsor may only need a high-level summary of budget and milestones, while a team lead needs a detailed breakdown of task progress.

Step 5: Implement corrective or preventive actions

When a variance or risk requires a response, project managers have two options. Corrective actions address problems that have already occurred, such as reallocating resources to a delayed task. Preventive actions address risks before they happen, such as adding a buffer to an upcoming milestone running behind schedule.

Step 6: Monitor approved changes

Every change request goes through a formal review. Once approved, project managers verify that the change is implemented as intended, assess its impact on other areas of the project, and confirm that it does not introduce new risks or trigger additional scope changes.

Common KPIs used in project monitoring

Schedule variance, cost variance, cost performance index, and resource utilization rate are examples of project monitoring KPIs for measuring project performance. Each metric focuses on a different aspect of project health from schedule and budget to resource efficiency.

Metric	What it tells you
Schedule variance (SV)	If the project is ahead of, behind, or on schedule at a given point in time
Cost variance (CV)	How the actual spending compares to the budgeted cost of work completed so far
Cost performance index (CPI)	How much value the project is getting for every dollar spent
Schedule performance index (SPI)	How efficiently the project is progressing relative to the planned timeline
Resource utilization rate	How effectively team members are being allocated across the project
Milestone achievement rate	How many key targets the project is hitting on time throughout the lifecycle
Defect/quality metrics	How well deliverables are meeting the quality standards set during planning
Burn rate	How fast the project budget is being consumed relative to what was planned

Common challenges in project monitoring & control

Inaccurate reporting, scope creep, disconnected tools, and lack of team support are the common challenges in project monitoring. These issues often stem from the planning phase when monitoring protocols and reporting standards are not properly established. 

• Inaccurate or delayed reporting: When team members are late or inconsistent in delivering status updates, project managers spend more time reconciling conflicting updates than actually monitoring performance.
• Scope creep: Scope creep happens when slight changes are added to a project without approval. Each minor change may seem harmless, but together, they can expand the project beyond its original scope. 
• Over-reliance on status meetings: Status meetings alone do not make up project monitoring. Without supporting data, they reflect team sentiment rather than actual project performance.
• Resistance from team members: When monitoring is perceived as micromanagement, team members may underreport issues or provide overly optimistic updates. 
• Lack of system integration: Using multiple disconnected tools to track project data increases the risk of critical updates being posted to the wrong platform.  

Best practices for effective project monitoring & control

Effective project monitoring and control requires consistent data collection, standardized reporting, centralized data access, and stakeholder communication. The following best practices outline how project managers can build a monitoring approach that meets the quality standards established at the beginning of the life cycle.

1. Establish a monitoring cadence

Set a consistent schedule for data collection and performance reviews. Each review interval serves a unique purpose: Daily standups surface immediate blockers, weekly status reports track short-term progress against the plan, and monthly performance reviews assess whether the project is still meeting its targets.

2. Use a centralized project management tool

Storing all project data on a single platform eliminates the risk of teams working from conflicting information and gives every stakeholder access to the most recent project updates.

3. Standardize reporting templates

Applying consistent reporting formats make it easier to compare performance across time periods and reduce the time project managers spend formatting updates instead of analyzing them.

4. Involve stakeholders throughout the project

Stakeholder communication should not be limited to milestone completions. Regular updates give stakeholders enough context to approve changes and respond to issues quickly.

5. Document every approved change

Every change to the project scope, timeline, or budget should be formally recorded. Undocumented changes are hard to track and frequently the cause of scope creep.

Next step: Project closure

Monitoring and control gives project managers the performance data needed to determine when a project has met its objectives and is ready to move into the final phase of the lifecycle: project closure.

Project closure is the process of wrapping up all project activities. It ensures that contractual obligations are fulfilled and all final documentation is completed and handed over to the relevant parties. In the next article in this series, we will explore the phase focused on confirming project completion.

FAQs