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Slot Management 101: Controlling a stage
By Andy Cosgrove You developed a well-defined project concept in the business case, you put together a project brief and used it to get project approval. You planned and executed the initiation stage, but the real work still hasn’t begun. Now what?
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fter receiving project approval, you gave yourself a much deserved pat on the back and congratulated all those involved for a job well done. You then toiled over the initiation stage to create the management approaches, the project controls and the project plan. You assembled the project initiation documentation and now have a firm foundation to make your ‘next great idea’ a massive success. At this point you and your outstanding team will be feeling really proud of what you’ve accomplished. However, you haven’t yet grabbed a hammer, turned on your cement mixer or put a finger on your impressive new casino management system. Your next step is knowing how to successfully control a project management stage.
necessary precautions and corrective actions are taken to ensure that the management stage remains within pre-defined tolerances. To successfully manage a stage, the focus must be on the products that need to be created, risks and issues need to be kept under control, and each stage must be delivered to stated quality standards and within tolerances for cost, effort and time. The main activities are as follows:
The purpose of the controlling a stage process is to assign work to be done, monitor the work in progress, deal with issues and risks, report progress and ensure all the
Work Packages – If people were to start working on project activities when they felt like it, it would be chaotic. Can you imagine your systems installation team travelling one
INFINITY GAMING
• Work packages - are authorized, reviewed, and received when completed. • Monitoring and reporting – review the stage status, report highlights. • Issues and risks – capture and examine, escalate issues and risks, and take corrective action.
thousand miles to find out that the systems hardware won’t arrive for another week? Although work teams require a certain level of autonomy, it’s important that work commences and continues only with the consent of the project manager. The vehicle for this is the production, execution and delivery of a work package. A work package may include extracts from the project plan, and if a product requires more than one work package to create it, then it should be broken down into further products. Reviewing a work package is done in line with the frequency of reporting defined in the work package itself.When the work package is allocated to a team, there should be a matching confirmation that the work has been successfully completed. When approved any subsequent changes must pass through the change control process. The main components of the work package are as follows:
