Management of Engineering Projects - Controlling

Control: making something happen the way it was planned to happen.
Controlling: the process managers go through to control.
According to Roberto Mockler, controlling is a systematic effort by business management to:
- Compare performance to predetermined standards, plans, or objectives.
- Determine whether performance is in line with these standards and take any remedial action required.
- Ensure that human and other corporate resources are being used effectively and efficiently to achieve corporate objectives.

The systematic process through which managers regulate organizational activities to make them consistent with the expectations established in plans, and to help them achieve all predetermined standards of performance.
This definition implies that leaders must:
- Establish performance standards.
- Develop mechanisms for gathering performance information to assess the degree to which standards are being met.

Set performance standards.
Measure actual performance.
Compare actual performance with standards.
If deviations are unacceptable, take corrective action.
If no deviations or if deviations are acceptable, take no corrective action (or provide positive reinforcement).
Periodically repeat the process.

Whenever possible, the standards should be set in a manner that allows them to be compared with actual performance.

An organization must decide:
- What to measure.
- When to measure.
- How frequently to measure.

This step involves determining if actual performance compared to standards falls.

If the deviation from performance is unacceptable, then corrective action is warranted.
If the deviation is acceptable, no correction action is necessary.

Preventive control
Concurrent control
Corrective control
The type of control used is determined primarily by the work phase in which the control is needed.

Focuses on detecting undesirable material, financial, or human resources that serve as inputs to the transformation process.

Focuses on the transformation process to ensure that it is functioning properly.

Most organizations use several control systems focused on various phases of the transformation process.

Managers need to ensure that planned performance and actual performance are equivalent in the short-term and long-term production quotas.

When management exerts too much control and too rigid, employee morale tends to be low and frustrated because they think that there is no freedom for them to do a good job.

Although controls can be designed to focus on relatively narrow aspects of an organization, managers must remember that prospective corrective action is not only related to the specific activity being controlled but also related to all other organization units.

Control activities are not the goals of the control process; they are merely the means to eliminating problems. Corrective actions are activities that can be justified only if they yield some organizational benefit that exceeds the cost of performing them.

Employees may perceive that management is basing corrective action solely on department records with no regard for extenuating circumstances. If this is the case, they may feel pressured to falsify records.

A control system should measure what is important now and what will be important in the future… not what was important in the past.

To be effective, a control system must employ all of the steps in the control process.

Effective control systems typically require managers to blend quantitative (objective) and qualitative (subjective) performance measures.