Introduction

Once the project has been planned and the project manager has received permission to go ahead then the implementation process starts and the project manager and team will work on the project until it is complete. This chapter explores the implementation and project completion process, and it provides guidance on what to do if things go wrong.

Implementing the project

This stage involves putting the plan into action and actually ‘doing’ the project. The implementation phase involves managing the following:

The people side of project management is covered in more detail in Chapter 10 and the financial side is covered in Chapter 6. In this section we will focus on the project process which involves monitoring, tracking and, where necessary, taking corrective action. Effective project managers are people who are able to juggle many different tasks and issues, and respond proactively to problems and challenges as they arise during the project implementation process.

Although you will have a detailed project plan, it is unlikely that everything will go exactly to plan. Your risk analysis will have identified potential trouble spots and these all need careful monitoring. In real-life projects a diverse range of factors can intervene with adverse effects. Some examples include:

Monitoring the tasks

As project manager you need to monitor tasks, blockages and slippage, match of plan with reality, expenditure, quality, complex changes to the plan. Reiss (1995) identifies two approaches to monitoring progress: