Control & Review: key terms, formulas and examples
Control compares plan with reality: variance, slack, status reports, change requests and risk registers. At the end, run a retrospective.
Example
A project 20% over budget needs variance analysis now.
Takeaway
Route changes through a formal request and capture lessons learned.
Key terms
- Scope creep
- Uncontrolled growth of a project's requirements.
- Retrospective
- A team review of what went well and what to improve.
- Contingency plan
- A backup plan in case something goes wrong.
- Agile
- Working in short cycles, learning and adjusting often.
- Risk management
- Finding, ranking and reducing threats to a business.
- Risk register
- A list of project risks with their likelihood, impact and owner.
- Variance
- The gap between planned and actual results.
- Slack
- How long a task can slip without delaying the project.
- Earned value
- A method comparing work done against plan and cost.
- Change request
- A formal proposal to alter scope, time or cost.
- Project closure
- The final stage: deliver, review and release resources.
- Lessons learned
- Notes on what worked and what did not.
- Status report
- A summary of progress and issues.
- Burndown chart
- A chart of remaining work over time.
- Quality gate
- A checkpoint a project must pass to continue.
Formulas
Cost performance indexEV ÷ AC
Schedule performance indexEV ÷ PV
Schedule varianceEV − PV
Defect rateD ÷ U × 100
Cost varianceEV − AC
Master Control & Review in a game
Quizzes, a CEO simulator, a real estate tycoon game and startup tools. Free to start, in 7 languages.
Play BizJourney free →