Alternative Technology Association: East Timor Project Governance Plan

This report outlines a comprehensive project governance plan for the Alternative Technology Association's solar project in East Timor, under the leadership of International Project Manager Kate Greenwood. It emphasizes the importance of monitoring and evaluating the project's progress to ensure success. The report recommends the Earned Value Management (EVM) method for cost and schedule control, highlighting its benefits, such as early warning systems and centralized management. It also discusses alternative methods like forecasting and variance analysis, along with their associated risks. The report details the format of reports to be presented to stakeholders and the CEO, emphasizing quarterly reviews by the Governance Board. The report provides insights into the data that should be included, such as how funds are being used, the project's schedule, and the performance of the project team. The report concludes by providing a detailed plan to ensure the project stays on track and meets its goals.

Running head: PROJECT GOVERNANCE PLAN 1
Project Governance Plan
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Date

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Project Governance Plan
This essay will lay the groundwork on how the Alternative Technology Association
under the leadership of International Project Manager, Kate Greenwood will be able to monitor
and evaluate their solar project in East Timor. It will ensure that every angle is covered to ensure
that this project is successful and if there is need to improve anything to ensure the success of the
project. Thus this will outline how Kate would be able to monitor the project and also to control
it. Also, it will show what kind of data the project manager, Kate, should give to the CEO and
stakeholders. It is this data that will make sure they know that the project is going on as they had
planned for it.
In the case of project success, there is a need for a methodology to monitor how funds
assigned to the project are being utilized. For this solar project in East Timor, the cost
management system that I would recommend to be used is the Earned Value Management or
Analysis method. This method is a mathematical one where one can measure how the project is
performing in real time (Fleming & Koppelman, 2016). It can be used to for both monitoring the
cost and schedules of the project. It will enable Kate, the project manager to know if the solar
project in East Timor is being undertaken on budget and also be able to understand the project
in-depth and if it is not on a budget she could take the corrective action to ensure it goes back on
track. The reason I choose this cost and schedule-monitoring method is that it can perform both
duties of monitoring how the project is using the budget it has been assigned and if the schedule
of the project is being kept and everything is being done on time. It also enables the ATA better
manage and measure how the solar project in East Timor is performing and its progress so far
thus it gives good insight on the company.

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Some of the benefits of using the Earned Value Management System include. First, it
serves as an early warning system in case the East Timor will not be prosperous. The system will
be able to detect whether or not the cost and schedule planned will vary and thus make the
project unsuccessful when undertaken or it will face the issue as it is being implemented
(Kerzner, 2013). The next benefit is there is a centralized system to control management. The
supervision and recording of information across the various systems are disorganized and
ineffectual. With this method though, there is a dependable central information source thus this
will result in a system that is faster when reporting on the project progress and also when
analyzing the data collected. Next is that one can have data to compare with in future when
undertaking a similar project so that they can use it and know the dos and don’ts of the plan to
make it successful. Finally, it will enable the organization monitor the funds being received
through donations towards the solar project how it is being used and where it is being applied in
the project hence there will be transparency in the system. Some of the advantages of the other
methods include the following (Pajares, & Lopez-Paredes, 2011). In the forecasting method, it
similarly to the above process has the advantage of providing the organization make decisions
for its future as it uses qualitative data that has been judged by experts (Box, Jenkins, Reinsel, &
Ljung, 2015). The next method is variance analysis; its advantage is that it creates a sense of
responsibility accounting. It is where managers are held accountable for their actions when the
project is being done hence everyone will do the project to their best of their ability (Hocking,
2013).
Some of the risks that are involved in the methods of monitoring the cost and schedule in
the undertaking of the East Timor solar project include the following. In the first mode Earned
Value Management System, some of the risks are that we tend not to focus on the quality of the

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work done in the project just achieving the values that we set for the project. Also, another risk is
that it is quite costly to implement the management system and also needs to have coordination
with several departments hence requires a lot of work for it to function (Naeni, Shadrokh &
Salehipour, 2011). The risk involved by using the forecasting method is that there is no accurate
way to forecast the happenings of the future thus there different scenarios that this technique will
come up with on how the project cost and schedule will be ongoing (Box, Jenkins, Reinsel, &
Ljung, 2015). For the variance analysis method, the risk in using it is that there tends to be a
tendency to focus on the past projects and not on the future of the ongoing project thus they may
change the project even if it may have been successful on the path they were undertaking
(Hocking, 2013).
The reports that will be presented to the stakeholders and CEO will be in the following
format using the format of a financial report. The data that should be shown is on how the funds
received from donors is being used in the project implementation, the schedule of the project
implementation and it progress as of the time the report was being reported and also how the
budget that ATA has set for the East Timor solar project is being used and performance of the
people in the project (Glesne, 2015). I prefer this, as it will ensure that the stakeholders and CEO
are up to date with the progress of the project by receiving quarterly reports. The Governance
Board should meet at every quarter to review the project progress for the length of the project,
and this should involve Kate the international project manager, stakeholders, the CEO and the
financial team as they all play a part in the East Timor solar project. The CEO and Board project
reports should follow the format of the annual report, as it will sufficiently represent the
information got from meetings they will hold (Lichtenberger, Mather, Kaufman, & Kaufman,
2012).

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References
Box, G. E., Jenkins, G. M., Reinsel, G. C., & Ljung, G. M. (2015). Time series analysis:
forecasting and control. John Wiley & Sons.
Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2016, December). Earned value project management.
Project Management Institute.
Glesne, C. (2015). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. Pearson.
Hocking, R. R. (2013). Methods and applications of linear models: regression and the analysis
of variance. John Wiley & Sons.
Kerzner, H. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Lichtenberger, E. O., Mather, N., Kaufman, N. L., & Kaufman, A. S. (2012). Essentials of
assessment report writing (Vol. 22). John Wiley & Sons.
Naeni, L. M., Shadrokh, S., & Salehipour, A. (2011). A fuzzy approach for the earned value
management. International Journal of Project Management, 29(6), 764-772.
Pajares, J., & Lopez-Paredes, A. (2011). An extension of the EVM analysis for project
monitoring: The Cost Control Index and the Schedule Control Index. International
Journal of Project Management, 29(5), 615-621.

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