Project Governance Plan Report: ATA Project Cost and Schedule Tracking

This report presents a comprehensive project governance plan designed for the Alternative Technology Association's (ATA) international solar project in East Timor. It details recommended methodologies for tracking project costs and schedules, including techniques like crashing and fast tracking, along with their associated advantages and risks. The report outlines the structure and format of project reports tailored for the project manager, governance board, and the CEO, ensuring clear communication of key performance indicators, milestones, and potential risks. It further specifies the timing and attendees for project governance board meetings, emphasizing the importance of decision-makers and stakeholders. The report also provides a clear framework for data presentation to the CEO and board, ensuring that critical information flows effectively for informed decision-making. The report underscores the significance of regular reporting, risk management, and stakeholder communication for the successful execution of the project. This report highlights the best practices for tracking, reporting, and governing the project to ensure on-time, within-budget delivery and successful project outcomes.

INTERNATIONAL PROJECT
MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Methodology for tracking cost and schedule..............................................................................1
Format of data reflected to project manager or team and governance board..............................2
Timing of project governance board meeting and its attendees..................................................3
Format of data presented to CEO and board...............................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
The present report will articulate about methodology recommended for tracking cost and
schedule along with reason to select them. It will outline advantages and risk of implication of
monitoring and controlling methods. Moreover, this report has articulated the format and
structure of project report stated for project manager, governance board and same for Chief
Executive Officer and board of directors as well. Apart from this, it will articulate about timing
of project governance board meeting with their members and reasons for selecting these
attendees.
Methodology for tracking cost and schedule
In the present scenario, there are various aspects for cost and schedule tracking such as crashing,
fast tracking, work break down structure, Variance analysis, Earned Value management, To-
complete performance Index within project management and even Gantt chart. The present
project is about Australia’s alternative technology Association which has won international
award for its work up brings solar-powered lighting to remote villages in East Timor. Crashing is
considered as schedule compression technique which is implicated for decreasing or shortening
the project schedule. Generally, it engages resources for specific activity of project (Ballesteros-
Perez, Elamrousy and González-Cruz, 2019). It is performed in such manner that project could
be completed quickly and seamlessly, but this is expensive. Crashing the project gives direct
impact the project triple constraints as cost and schedule. This will quicken the project delivery
schedule and even raise the budget of project whereas this does not impact the scope as well. The
case when project sponsors have desire for crashing the project which signifies the concern about
cost of the project (Feylizadeh et.al., 2018).
On the consequent basis, crashing project will raise cost of the project and determines the
critical path tasks with the presence of potential for compressing the project schedule. Apart
from this, fast tracking engages alteration of string of activities so that some tasks are performed
on simultaneous basis. This raises risk engaged and avoids discretionary dependencies and
performs aggregate of activities on parallel basis and this does not allows raising project’s cost.
In simpler terms, fast tracking is specific technique which is implemented in crunch times or
crisis and even involves undertaking particular schedule activity and event of work breakdown
event that has been scheduled on previous basis and accelerating it in some other aspect (Russell,
1

Pferdehirt and Nelson, 2018). This is replicated as project schedule technique of compression
which sorts in specific intent to undertake whole project schedule and attempt for compressing in
small duration through conducting some events either on quick basis or by performing some
events that was intended to be performed on simultaneous basis.
With the above analysis, fast tracking project is preferred because it helps for early
delivery of project as it enables for delivering and implementing the project ahead of schedule
along with any individual and for project manager. Furthermore, this up brings project back to
schedule and track as with its elaboration, it undergoes with different delays that induce for
postponing the delivery date. The delivery of late project is highly detrimental for career of
project manager and with case, its implication possible for bringing back the project within
expected duration or time frame (Simon, 2018). Thus, it leads to promptly release for project
resources. However, crashing has risks as it is costly and expediting the project would be usually
on expense of cost and quality of outcome of all accelerated activities or tasks. Apart from this,
there is high probability of completing and partial failure in accelerated tasks as it has presence
of critical activities and impact the whole project and put at high risks.
Format of data reflected to project manager or team and governance board
Reporting is considered as source of business intelligence which leads business leaders
for designing more accurate and data driven decisions. This report is useful as work is prepared
and presented. Its main objective is to inform managers about various business aspects, and it
helps for making better informed decisions. There is gathering of data through different
departments of the organizations for tracking key performance indicators and reflecting in
understandable manner (Fioravanti et.al., 2018). The main objectives of this report are to
improve communication throughout the organization, simplifying the communication process,
delivering key messages to the target audience, which is intended, keep the stakeholders
informed and last is to improvement in organizational support for projects and team as well. The
first and primary information is general project info as name of the project, project manager,
number of resources along with date of the report and author’s name. Apart from this, there
is presence of milestones review as it is major phases of project which is good method to break
up larger project within digestible parts (Zareei, 2018). There is absence of small tasks and made
up of that task which collaborates as project phase. Apart from this, there will be inclusion of
short summary of the predicting the completion date and projects cost. This must ensure for
2

including tasks which faces problems and gives major impact on costs and deadline. There
should be information for resolving issues and outcome for fixing the issue. This report will
consider risks and issues which have been arisen over course of project’s date. Within this risk
category, it should report the risk on monthly basis and normally its output initiates after risk
review meeting. Conversely, one could update risk log at any time and could encourage project
team members for purpose of contributing risk to the log when it is essential to record. It must
consider entire summary of project’s risk profile and best approach comprises risk details that
has potential for creating issues for project (Chawla et.al., 2018). Henceforth, this includes
statement on risk of low level and summarises the method for managing this.
It is very significant for backing the report up with hard numbers for proving the
statements and establishes the metrics for status reporting at phase of planning the project. It is
not possible for knowing that project is gaining success with absence of measuring level of
effectiveness. The metrics are best way for replicating that project is on track and evaluate any
aspect which has requirement of attention. In simpler terms, there will be articulation of info
graphic and detailed description of data within systematic view. The duration will be presented
in both form as time and cost for reporting duration. Its main components are data scope as key
part of initiative and even data manipulation as per information governance policies. This project
team must investigate about existing business rules could be implied prior to creating innovative
role as per information governance policies (Brunet, 2019). Henceforth, internal project review is
essential which includes status updates of tasks of information governance. The data steering
communities suggests or validate the project alterations and cross line of business data
management councils helps for undertaking decisions when project cross Lines of business.
Timing of project governance board meeting and its attendees
The project governance is replicated as procedure-oriented system by which projects are
directed on strategic basis, managed integrative and controlled holistically within ethical and
entrepreneurial reflected aspect, systematic to singular, interdisciplinary, complex context and
time wise limited of the project. This ensures about completion as per plan that is ultimate
objective of business or even benefits are delivered. It is comprised of two forms as working
group meeting and steering committee meetings (Kerzner, 2018). The typical programme or
project consists of various activities and task as some would be large and small and with short
and long durations. There might be single person working on task and it might be a team. It has
3

specified as every dimensions which is significant of systematic project governance structure for
information exchange, risk resolution and to make decisions.
The project working group shows that it used for driving much of the regular work and
meetings should be held on frequent basis. On normal basis, it is on weekly aspect and for paced
projects it could be on often basis. Moreover, forum is used for discussing the active world
completed and still the incomplete requirements and even could be implied for setting priorities.
The attendees would be responsible for completion of tasks and project manager. For larger
programmes or projects, this might lead the work stream (Moe, Dingsøyr and Rolland, 2018).
The project working group must have proper understanding of authority and might determine
issues and risks which is unable for resolving. This must be captured clearly, so that could be
discussed with project manager and required as per escalated to project steering committee.
The project steering committee would be next level of governance which is above PWG
and normally it is chaired through sponsor and typically the project manager. Generally,
frequency is dependent on duration of this ATA project as it took approx. 7.2 months which is of
medium duration and its meeting will be on monthly basis. The forum which is implied for
covering number of governance as it comprises official minutes to record who attend, key
discussion, capture actions and decisions (Randall et.al., 2019). Moreover, there must be review
of open actions for closure or updates and all actions closed since last PSC must be traced such
that members could review for ensuring their happiness that particular action has been closed. It
would also outline that what would be covered through whom in meeting and clear indication
about decisions which are being sort.
The project governance board must not have too many members and those who are
chosen should be real decision makers who can actively help for moving the project forward.
The attendees of project governance board are stated below:
 Project sponsor
 Project owner
 Members with specific project governance expertise and experience
 Representative from key stakeholders such as users and senior
 Representative from health and safety compliance
 Representative through Financial service division
4

 UOPMO for having standing (non-voting) and invite all PSCs and retaining the circulated
documents for every projects (Heldman, 2018).
Format of data presented to CEO and board
The correct information must be its systematic flow among management and board of
directors are important for making informed decisions and undertaking the expedited action. The
first method is to ensure that right information is observed through regular reports given to board
of directors (Wang et.al., 2019). The board report must follow an easy to ready format and could
be shorter than others which might be observes as memo with key bullets and headers which
highlights the key performance indicators, broader reports which is like academic report with
table of contents and cover page. The implication of headers and bullets enables board members
for scanning via topics and extracting relevant information (Ginesti et.al., 2018). There must be
introduction and summary of specific section to offer board an overview of information in the
report. The brief structure of the report to CEO and board is stated below:
 Date
 Committee’s name
 Committee chair’s name
 Members of committee
 Committee’s objective
 Summary of current attainment and current tasks
 List of tasks in upcoming and progress events
 Financial impact
 Dissenting opinions
 Recommendation to CEO or executive boards
 Recommendations to Board of directors
This report must indicate that whether project is recently on track, at rise or off track as this
could be done through extracting project management tool which allows for communicating the
ATA’s project status (Rashid, 2018). The simpler method to do this is implication of colour
coding system such as green represents on track, yellow shows risk and red is off track. With the
summary of project, it must be represented in quick brief within two to three sentences. The most
important is that adding high level overview of every key area and adding links to other tools and
documents along with key milestones, issues and challenges (Ahmadi, Nakaa and Bouri, 2018).
5

CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been concluded that project management is very important
as in this ATA solar project as well. It has shown that fast tracking method is highly
recommendable for cost and schedule tracking because it is affordable and least expensive as
compared to crashing. Moreover, it has shown that project governance board meeting is on basis
of completed duration of entire project and in this ATA solar project it could be done on monthly
basis.
6

REFERENCES
Ahmadi, A., Nakaa, N. and Bouri, A., (2018). Chief Executive Officer attributes, board
structures, gender diversity and firm performance among French CAC 40 listed firms. Research
in International Business and Finance, 44, pp.218-226.
Ballesteros-Perez, P., Elamrousy, K.M. and González-Cruz, M.C., (2019). Non-linear time-cost
trade-off models of activity crashing: Application to construction scheduling and project
compression with fast-tracking. Automation in Construction, 97, pp.229-240.
Brunet, M., (2019). Governance-as-practice for major public infrastructure projects: A case of
multilevel project governing. International Journal of Project Management, 37(2), pp.283-297.
Chawla, V., Chanda, A., Angra, S. and Chawla, G., (2018). The sustainable project management:
A review and future possibilities. Journal of Project Management, 3(3), pp.157-170.
Feylizadeh, M.R., Mahmoudi, A., Bagherpour, M. and Li, D.F., (2018). Project crashing using a
fuzzy multi-objective model considering time, cost, quality and risk under fast tracking
technique: A case study. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, (Preprint), pp.1-19.
Fioravanti, M.L., Sena, B., Paschoal, L.N., Silva, L.R., Allian, A.P., Nakagawa, E.Y., Souza,
S.R., Isotani, S. and Barbosa, E.F., (2018), February. Integrating project-based learning and
project management for software engineering teaching: an experience report. In Proceedings of
the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 806-811). ACM.
Ginesti, G., Drago, C., Macchioni, R. and Sannino, G., (2018). Female board participation and
annual report readability in firms with boardroom connections. Gender in Management: An
International Journal, 33(4), pp.296-314.
Heldman, K., (2018). PMP: project management professional exam study guide. John Wiley &
Sons.
Kerzner, H., (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John
Wiley & Sons.
Moe, N.B., Dingsøyr, T. and Rolland, K., (2018). To schedule or not to schedule? An
investigation of meetings as an inter-team coordination mechanism in large-scale agile software
development.
Randall, K.H., Slovensky, D., Weech-Maldonado, R., Patrician, P.A. and Sharek, P.J., (2019).
Self-Reported Adherence to High Reliability Practices Among Participants in the Children's
Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety Collaborative. The Joint Commission Journal on Quality
and Patient Safety, 45(3), pp.164-169.
Rashid, A., (2018). Board independence and firm performance: Evidence from
Bangladesh. Future Business Journal, 4(1), pp.34-49.
7

Russell, J., Pferdehirt, W. and Nelson, J., (2018). Project Scheduling. Technical Project
Management in Living and Geometric Order.
Simon, S.M., (2018). Evaluation of the Resource Leveling Techniques Employed by Contractors
in the Kenyan Construction Industry. International Journal of Innovative Technology and
Exploring Engineering (IJITEE), 7(4), pp.8-12.
Wang, G., DeGhetto, K., Ellen, B.P. and Lamont, B.T., (2019). Board antecedents of CEO
duality and the moderating role of country‐level managerial discretion: a meta‐analytic
investigation. Journal of Management Studies, 56(1), pp.172-202.
Zareei, S., (2018). Project scheduling for constructing biogas plant using critical path
method. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 81, pp.756-759.
8